Banque Populaire Brand Guidelines: The Angers Cooperative Behind the Plus-and-Times Sign

A people’s bank for small businesses.

Banque Populaire began in Angers, in western France, in 1878, when the first local “people’s bank” opened there, according to English and French Wikipedia. Groupe BPCE, its owner today, says the bank was set up at the urging of the Capuchin friar Ludovic de Besse, to give credit to craftsmen, shopkeepers and small business owners whom the established banks turned away. French Wikipedia describes the same purpose: banking services for artisans, traders, the liberal professions and small firms that the large commercial banks often refused.

The model spread as a set of local cooperatives rather than as one national bank. Its legal footing came during the First World War. The law of 13 March 1917 on credit for commerce and industry gave the Banques Populaires a cooperative status and, according to French Wikipedia, also created mutual guarantee societies. English Wikipedia says the law came with favourable financial and tax treatment, meant to fill a gap in short-term lending to small businesses left by struggling local banks. A central bank for the network, the Caisse centrale des Banques populaires, followed in 1921, and a trade body in 1929.

The sources used for this guide do not say how the banks operated during the occupation of 1940–1944. BPCE says that after 1945 the Banques Populaires extended their services to the liberal professions and then to private individuals, a step from business banking towards everyday banking.

A rooster, then plus and times.

Over the twentieth century the network built a group around itself. French Wikipedia dates CASDEN, the bank for staff in national education, research and culture, to 1964; English Wikipedia says it joined the Banque Populaire network in 1974. ACEF, the associations for public-sector staff, followed in 1970. BPCE says Banque Populaire launched Intercarte in 1968, which it describes as the first card for credit and cash withdrawals usable internationally. In 1998 the central bank bought Natexis, renaming it Natexis Banques Populaires, and in 1999 the central bank was replaced by the Banque fédérale des banques populaires. In 2002 the group bought the credit insurer Coface, and Crédit Coopératif joined it.

Its identity has its own record. French Wikipedia says the banks first chose a rooster, a national symbol, as their emblem, and kept it at the centre of their identities from 1918 to 1972. In 1972 they combined a plus sign and a multiplication sign, to say that adding everyone’s strengths multiplies the effect of the whole. The emblem gained converging lines in 1987 to stand for the group’s federal character; the name joined the logo from 1995; and in 2018 the 1987 mark was redrawn in a cleaner version. Its slogans ran from “Plus et mieux. Pour vous” in 1972 to “Additionner les forces, multiplier les chances” (add up strengths, multiply chances) from 2014 and, since September 2018, “La réussite est en vous” (success is within you).

Sailing is its most visible sponsorship. French Wikipedia says the group has been present in competitive sailing since 1990, is a partner of the French sailing federation, and christened the trimaran Maxi Banque Populaire V in Nantes in 2008. In November 2026 the maxi-trimaran Banque Populaire XI sailed in the Ultim class of the Route du Rhum–Destination Guadeloupe, which started on 1 November, with Banque Populaire Méditerranée among its partners, Tribuca reported on 2 November 2026.

Design and documentation.

French banks tend to present themselves through a small set of strong signals: a confident wordmark, a simple symbol and one or two colours used with discipline. Green, red and blue recur across the sector. Crédit Agricole is sometimes called “la banque verte,” the green bank, for its farming roots, while Société Générale has used a red and black square since 1990, according to French Wikipedia. The result is a high street where a colour can identify a bank before its name is read.

Many of the largest groups are mutualist or cooperative, built from local and regional banks owned by their members, and their identities often carry that structure. A national mark sits above regional names, and branch signage, city photography and local news pages speak to a particular town or département. The same brand has to work on a village branch, a city tower and a phone screen.

Online, the pages follow everyday needs: current accounts and cards, home loans, insurance, savings and investment, with separate areas for professionals, farmers and companies. Mobile apps now carry much of the relationship, and app screens, notifications and onboarding flows have become part of the visual identity as much as the logo on a branch front.

Sponsorship gives these brands a public stage. Crédit Agricole has backed football’s Coupe de France since 1974, according to English Wikipedia, and Société Générale says it has sponsored the French Rugby Federation since 1987; culture, music and disability sport also feature. Annual and integrated reports complete the picture: long documents in which the group’s colours, typefaces and photography are applied with the same care as on a campaign poster, and a useful place to study how each identity holds together.

A brand inside Groupe BPCE.

The group did not stay on its own. In 2006 Banque Populaire and Groupe Caisse d’Epargne combined their corporate and investment banking arms, Natexis Banques Populaires and Ixis, as Natixis, which was listed on 25 October 2006. In July 2008 the group bought seven regional banks from HSBC, French Wikipedia says, among them Banque Chaix and Banque de Savoie. In October 2008, during the financial crisis, it announced plans to merge with Caisse d’Epargne, and the two central bodies merged on 24 June 2009 to form Groupe BPCE. The French state put in capital and took a temporary stake of about a fifth of the new group, French Wikipedia says. Since then Banque Populaire has been a brand of BPCE, with a branch network kept separate from Caisse d’Epargne’s.

The regional banks remain cooperatives with member customers as shareholders. A national federation, set up in 2009 as an association, brings together the banks that use the brand, and a series of mergers from 2011 cut their number: Banque Populaire Méditerranée formed in November 2016, for example, and Banque Populaire Grand Ouest after member votes in December 2017. In November 2026 Refrance described the network as 12 regional Banques Populaires, as the banks, CASDEN Banque Populaire and ACEF formalised a partnership for public-sector staff on 5 November. French Wikipedia also records that the sanctions committee of the French banking supervisor, the ACPR, sanctioned Banque Populaire des Alpes in June 2012 and Banque Populaire de la Côte d’Azur in January 2013 over shortcomings in their anti-money-laundering procedures.

For a design guide, Banque Populaire shows how a federation of regional banks can share one sign drawn from arithmetic. Compare BPCE, its group since 2009, and Caisse d’Epargne, its partner network inside the group. For this guide we use a deep navy, a cobalt and a coral red with a sans, an unofficial interpretation; no product or logo is reproduced.

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