BRI Brand Guidelines: Purwokerto 1895, Village Lending & a 2025 Blue Rebrand

A patih, a mosque fund and a long list of names.

BRI, in full PT Bank Rakyat Indonesia (Persero) Tbk, the “People’s Bank of Indonesia,” dates itself to 16 December 1895 in Purwokerto, Central Java. The national news agency Antara, in a December 2025 article drawing on the bank’s official history, says it was founded by Raden Bei Aria Wirjaatmadja to help local people, especially the priyayi, the native official class, escape moneylenders, under the name De Poerwokertosche Hulp en Spaarbank der Inlandsche Hoofden. detikFinance, in a piece published the same month with quotes from the bank, describes Wirjaatmadja as the patih, a senior local administrator, of Purwokerto, and gives the first name as Hulp en Spaarbank der Inlandsche Bestuurs Ambtenaren, a help and savings bank for native civil servants; English Wikipedia treats that second name as the first rename.

The origin story is one the bank tells often. According to detikFinance, Wirjaatmadja first lent his own money, and when demand outgrew it he turned, with the backing of the Purwokerto mosque’s penghulu and the Dutch assistant resident, to the mosque’s cash fund. Colonial rules barring the use of mosque funds outside worship ended that arrangement, but borrowers kept repaying, and European officials in the town then supported a formal lending business.

The bank went through many names. English Wikipedia says its last colonial name, from 1934, was Algemene Volkscredietbank. Under the Japanese occupation it was renamed Syomin Ginko, Antara says; the sources used for this guide do not say how the bank operated during the occupation of 1942–1945 beyond that change of name. In 1946 the new Indonesian government designated it the Republic’s first state bank, under the name Bank Rakyat Indonesia. It stopped operating in 1948 and reopened as Bank Rakyat Indonesia Serikat, and in 1960 it was folded into a bank for cooperatives, farmers and fishers. In 1965 that bank was merged into the central bank and soon traded as Bank Negara Indonesia Unit II, before the government separated it again in 1968 under the name Bank Rakyat Indonesia, Antara reports. A 1968 law set it up as a commercial bank with a development role, detikFinance says.

Farm credit, village units and agents.

Lending to small borrowers is the thread that runs through BRI’s modern history. Indonesian Wikipedia says the government made it the sole channel for the Bimas farm-credit programme in 1969, and that when Bimas ended in 1984 the bank began offering micro-loans on commercial terms. In 1992 it became a limited company, and in November 2003 the state sold 30% of its shares in an initial public offering, English Wikipedia says.

The group has grown around that core. Indonesian Wikipedia says BRI bought Bank Jasa Artha in 2007 and renamed it BRIsyariah for Islamic banking; in 2021 that bank was merged with the sharia arms of two other state banks to form Bank Syariah Indonesia, with Bank Mandiri as majority owner. The same year the government transferred majority stakes in the pawn lender Pegadaian and the microfinance company PNM to BRI, creating what the bank calls its ultra-micro holding. BRI told detikFinance in December 2025 that the holding reached 34.5 million active borrowers, and that its BRILink network of shop-based agents numbered 1.2 million in 66,648 villages.

Reaching a country of islands has shaped its channels. Indonesian Wikipedia records Teras BRI Kapal, floating service points on boats for coastal and island communities, from August 2015, and a bank-owned communications satellite, BRIsat, launched from French Guiana in June 2016 to link its branches. The mobile app BRImo followed in 2019. Abroad, English Wikipedia lists BRI offices in New York, Singapore, Hong Kong, the Cayman Islands, Taipei and Timor-Leste.

Southeast Asian banks.

Southeast Asian banks speak to a wide range of customers at once: city professionals and market traders, exporters and farmers, families in the capital and small businesses in provincial towns. Their identities are built to read clearly on a branch sign, a card and a phone screen. Strong symbols and wordmarks are common, often set in deep blues, greens, purples or golds, and many marks carry a symbol with local meaning: Bangkok Bank, for example, has used the royal lotus as its emblem since 1972, according to Thai Wikipedia.

Names often work in more than one language. Many banks pair a name in the local language with an English name or a short set of initials, and some add a Chinese name for business in China; Kasikornbank introduced a logo in Thai, Chinese and English in 2007, English Wikipedia says. Photography of branches, city skylines and everyday customers carries much of the visual message on websites and in campaigns.

Digital channels sit at the centre of the brand. Bank websites give prominent space to everyday banking, loans and mobile apps, such as Bangkok Bank’s Bualuang mBanking and Kasikornbank’s K PLUS, and to QR payments for shops and market stalls. Many banks also present programmes for small businesses, farmers and communities with less access to banking, and an increasing number present themselves as regional banks, linking customers across borders through subsidiaries in neighbouring countries.

Reporting is the other half of the identity. Listed banks publish annual and sustainability reports, and these documents often carry the most considered typography and photography a bank produces. This guide looks at each brand’s history and what can be checked about how it presents itself, and treats the colours and type shown here as an unofficial interpretation rather than official brand assets.

One bank for everyone, in three blues.

BRI remains majority state-owned. Indonesian Wikipedia says the government’s majority is now held through Danantara Asset Management, whose stake stood at 52.66% after a transfer of shares in January 2026, alongside a special Series A share held by the state.

Its identity was relaunched for its 130th anniversary. Antara reported that the theme for the anniversary year was “Satu Bank Untuk Semua,” or “one bank for everyone,” covering customers from micro-borrowers to corporations. On 16 December 2025 BRI launched a full corporate rebranding at an event in Jakarta, detikFinance and JPNN reported. The bank said research by Kantar, Nielsen and Kadence had shown that its link with the word rakyat, the people, made it look old to urban and younger customers, that its digital services were not distinctive enough and that its sub-brands were out of step. It set out a brand personality of pairs, among them trusted yet progressive and world-class yet very Indonesian, while saying micro-lending would stay its core business.

The design changes were described in some detail. JPNN reported that the new visual identity changed the logo and the colours, and brought the full name Bank Rakyat Indonesia back into greater prominence to keep the bank’s historic link with ordinary people. Indonesian Wikipedia says the earlier wordmark had already been shortened from “BANK BRI” to “BRI” in 2020; in the new version the three letters, set in the AU Passata typeface, are made slimmer, the full name is set beneath them in Inter Display, and three official blues are named Nusantara Blue, Cakrawala Blue and Mentari Blue. The new logo was rolled out across most companies in the BRI group from the December 2025 launch.

For a design guide, BRI shows how a very old bank can modernise its letters and colours while bringing its full name back to the front. Compare Bank Mandiri, another state-majority Indonesian bank, and BCA, the privately controlled Jakarta bank. For this guide we use an archipelago blue, ink, a pale horizon wash and a warm morning orange with a sans, an unofficial interpretation; no product or logo is reproduced.

Keep BRI’s identity on hand — save it to a board in the Made Good inspiration library.