Limited financial differentiation among Ecuadorian savings and credit cooperatives: evidence consistent with institutional isomorphism

Financial cooperativism plays a central role in Ecuador’s economic inclusion, but operates under a regulatory framework that may homogenize its financial profiles. This study examines whether a set of traditional financial indicators can discriminate between savings and credit cooperatives or, on the contrary, if financial isomorphism is observed. Anonymized data from 25 supervised cooperatives during 2016–2023 (200 observations) were used, considering seven ratios of volume, liquidity, risk, and profitability. Methodologically, descriptive statistics, Pearson correlations, and a canonical discriminant analysis were applied, complemented by biplots, canonical centroids, and a heatmap of standardized values. The first and second discriminant functions accounted for 26.8 and 20.1%, respectively, of the between-group discriminant variance, with main contributions from delinquency, current liquidity, and financial income. Under leave-one-out cross-validation, overall classification accuracy was approximately 6%, statistically indistinguishable from the 4% chance benchmark for 25 groups (the 23% obtained by resubstitution reflects in-sample overfitting), a multivariate test of group differences was not statistically significant, and graphical representations showed substantial overlap of cooperatives in the canonical space. The results are consistent with a relatively homogeneous sectorial financial structure and with isomorphic processes that may be compatible with the sector’s interest rate caps and prudential requirements, although this design cannot establish causality. The findings suggest that traditional financial statements may be useful for supervision but may be insufficient to capture competitive heterogeneity, suggesting that relevant differentiation may lie in intangible dimensions not observed in the ratios. It is recommended to incorporate variables of corporate governance, innovation, and exposure networks to assess how this accounting homogeneity relates to systemic risk and the resilience of the Ecuadorian cooperative sector.