A measure of unease and even dissent among co-operatives in Australia's financial services sector is one takeaway from a close reading of the annual reports of most credit unions, mutual banks and building societies for the 2016 financial year.Two mutuals disclosed that at some point over the last year they'd resigned from the Customer Owned Banking Association. This brings to five the number of mutuals choosing to leave the sector lobby.BankVic (once a police credit union and now a mutual bank) and also Bananacoast Credit Union left COBA in the last year. Neither responded to inquiries to clarify their reasons.The inability, not for the first time, of COBA and the mutual bank sector to rally resources for a sector-wide marketing initiative motivated a handful of credit unions to mention their dismay in reports to members.Anita Andrew, chair of Laboratories Credit Union, wrote in the annual report that "the development of a shared value proposition and sector-based marketing has been stalled because of lack of sector-wide support for a marketing budget."COBA, Andrew explained to members, "initiated a strategic vision project to enhance collaboration within the movement to improve our market penetration, service offerings and future financial viability across the sector."She said this project "focused on shared service provision, key areas for innovation, improved performance measurement and governance performance management."Queenslanders Credit Union's chair John Weier and chief executive Christine Flynn voiced their frustration in a joint commentary."We are disappointed to report that the Customer Owned Banking Association industry project aimed at developing an industry-wide advertising campaign mentioned in last year's report did not come to fruition," they wrote."The project, aimed at educating the general public about the benefits of banking with a credit union, building society or mutual bank, was fully investigated however it was unable to gain sufficient support to proceed."Banking Day gathers that a number of larger mutual ADIs were unwilling to fund the proposal, the idea weighed down by the conflicting national sales goals of many credit unions and mutual banks and concerns over misallocated spending.It's now pushing a decade since the then Abacus (Australian Mutuals, as COBA was known) last rounded up sufficient support for national television advertising intended to benefit all affiliates.COBA chief executive Mark Degotardi said in an email: "In April this year the sector decided not to pursue a collective advertising campaign initiative.  These campaigns are always difficult to implement given the diversity in terms of size and location of our members.  "Raising consumer awareness of customer owned ADIs remains an important focus for COBA and our members and COBA continues to work with members on opportunities to increase awareness of the value and importance of the customer-owned model."