Česká spořitelna Brand Guidelines: A Prague Savings Bank of 1825, Erste and George

A savings bank in two rooms of the Bohemian Diet.

Česká spořitelna, whose name means “Czech Savings Bank,” traces its history to 1825. English Wikipedia says the bank is the heir to the Böhmische Sparkasse, the Bohemian Savings Bank, set up in Prague after a local government official, Josef von Hoch, first proposed it in 1823. It followed the first savings bank in the Austrian Empire, the Erste österreichische Spar-Casse, founded in Vienna in 1819 — the institution that, almost two centuries later, would buy the Prague bank.

Czech Wikipedia calls it the first savings institution on Czech territory and gives its opening date as 12 February 1825, the emperor’s birthday. Its founding fund was raised from nobles, the Prague archbishop, merchants and bankers. Its formal name was a long one, the savings bank “for the capital city of Prague and for Bohemia,” but the shorter Spořitelna Česká, or Böhmische Sparkasse, took hold; Czech Wikipedia notes that “Czech” described where it worked, not a national allegiance. Its purpose, like that of other savings banks of the time, was to help poorer people put money aside, paying a small interest on deposits kept in savings books.

The start was modest. English Wikipedia says the bank opened only on Mondays, Wednesdays and Saturdays, in two rooms of the Bohemian Diet building. It moved to its own office on Malostranské náměstí in 1845, and in 1861 completed a new head office by the architect Vojtěch Ignác Ullmann, described as Prague’s first building put up for a banking institution; Friedrich Schachner extended it in the 1890s. By the eve of the First World War the Böhmische Sparkasse had more than 70 branches, English Wikipedia says.

Occupation, nationalisation and a state savings bank.

The twentieth century reshaped the bank several times. After Czechoslovakia became independent in 1918, a savings law of 1920 set common rules for savings banks, and the Böhmische Sparkasse was one of two historic institutions allowed to keep operating on its old basis, English Wikipedia says.

In the spring of 1939 the rest of the Czech lands were occupied by Germany. Both English and Czech Wikipedia describe a forced concentration of credit institutions on the German model: a regulation of 1941 imposed a single organisation on banking in the Protectorate, under a central body through which the authorities controlled all financial institutions, and the network was cut back and Germanised. In 1943 the merged municipal savings bank of Prague was absorbed into the Böhmische Sparkasse, together with several district institutions, and the combined bank was renamed the Prague Savings Bank (Spořitelna pražská). After 1945 the savings network was rebuilt, and the former German institutions in the border regions were wound up.

From 1948 the system was nationalised. A law of 20 July 1948 merged all financial institutions in each locality, and from 1953 they formed a network of state savings banks. A law of 1967 combined them into one State Savings Bank, which on 1 January 1969 was split into the Česká státní spořitelna and a Slovak counterpart, English Wikipedia says. In those years the bank’s products were mostly savings books with different notice periods; it introduced savings for young people in 1969 and, from 1972, Sporožiro accounts that allowed cashless transfers.

On 1 February 1992 the state savings bank became a joint-stock company, Česká spořitelna, a.s. English Wikipedia says the state kept 40 percent, 20 percent went to towns and municipalities, three percent was held back for restitution claims and 37 percent was sold in the first wave of coupon privatisation.

How Central and Eastern European banks present themselves.

Banks in Central and Eastern Europe often carry long national-language names with diacritics, such as Powszechna Kasa Oszczędności, Česká spořitelna or Komerční banka, and shorten them to initials or a single word for everyday use. Many of today’s large banks also descend from state institutions of the communist period, so their identities can show several layers of history: a mark kept for decades, a new owner’s colours, or a symbol brought back. PKO Bank Polski still uses a logo drawn in the late 1960s, English Wikipedia says, while Bank Pekao made a bison its group logo in 1997, moved to its parent UniCredit’s style in 2012 and restored the bison after its change of owners in 2017.

Colour does much of the work. Blue, green, red and yellow appear again and again on the region’s bank signs, cards and apps, usually in a bold wordmark or a simple symbol that has to read clearly on a branch fascia, a cash machine and a phone screen. Ownership by international groups adds another layer, when a local bank takes on a parent’s colours or a shared mark, and sometimes sheds them again.

The banks’ websites follow a familiar pattern: pages on everyday accounts and cards, mortgages, savings and business banking, with prominent space for mobile apps and for the industry awards those apps win. Photography tends to show cities, branches and customers rather than abstract imagery, and sponsorship, from national football leagues to international championships, gives several of these brands a large public stage.

Annual reports, investor pages and a growing number of sustainability reports, often published in the home language and in English, complete the public record. This guide sets out what can be checked about each bank — when it was founded, who owns it and how its identity has changed — and marks clearly what rests only on the bank’s own word.

From the state to Erste Bank, and an app called George.

The decisive sale came in 2000. On 3 February 2000 Radio Prague reported that the Czech government had decided to sell its 52 percent stake in Česká spořitelna to Austria’s Erste Bank, after putting the majority holding up for sale in April 1999. English Wikipedia says Erste later raised its holding to 98 percent; Czech Wikipedia says Erste Group now owns all of the bank. Česká spořitelna itself says it has been part of Erste Group since 2000, and describes itself as the bank with the longest tradition on the Czech market.

Today Česká spořitelna, headquartered in Prague, serves individuals, small and medium-sized companies, towns and municipalities, and large corporations. Czech Wikipedia lists a building society, a pension company and leasing and factoring subsidiaries within its financial group. English Wikipedia describes it, as of 2023, as the largest bank on the Czech market, and the bank calls itself the largest Czech bank.

Its digital face is shared with its parent. Erste Group says the first code for its George internet banking platform was written in 2012 and that George launched in 2015; Česká spořitelna offers George as its mobile and internet bank, which it describes as a “partner” through a customer’s financial life, with a children’s version and an assistant that answers written questions. The bank also runs a programme it calls Finanční zdraví, or financial health, which it says won gold at the Digital CX Awards in 2024.

For a design guide, Česká spořitelna shows how a name nearly two centuries old can sit inside an international group while keeping its own language and its own app identity. Compare Komerční banka, another Prague bank with a foreign parent, and OTP Bank, a Hungarian bank that began as a national savings bank. For this guide we use a deep blue, a sky blue and a pale blue wash with a sans, an unofficial interpretation; no product or logo is reproduced.

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