Argenta Brand Guidelines: An Antwerp Savings Bank of 1956, an Apple Logo & a Family Owner

From personal loans to a savings bank on the Belgiëlei.

Argenta began in Antwerp in 1956. The company’s own history page says it was founded that year by four young men: Frans Kuijpers, Karel and Cyriel Schrijvers and Karel Van Rompuy. Dutch Wikipedia describes the early business as a financing company that specialised in personal loans, and dates its licence to take deposits to 1964.

In 1958, the company says, the Van Rompuy family and the board of the time moved the head office into a stately townhouse on the Belgiëlei in Antwerp, the street where the group is still registered. In 1965 Argenta became a savings bank and could sell savings books as well as deposit certificates; the same year it opened its first agency, run by independent part-time agents. A sister company, Argenta Spaarkas, known as Aspa, followed on 19 April 1966. An IBM System/360 computer arrived on 1 April 1968, and in 1969 a staff of about thirty moved into a former belle-époque hotel further along the same street.

The group widened step by step. The insurer Aras was set up in 1975, offering credit insurance and then life policies. From 1978 the agents began to work full time, and in the early 1980s Argenta stopped recruiting part-time agents altogether, the company says. Argenta Bank Luxemburg was founded in October 1990, and a Dutch branch of Aspa opened in 1997, run from Antwerp until a Dutch head office opened in Breda in 2008.

In 2001 the holding company Argenta Bank- en Verzekeringsgroep was formed. English Wikipedia says that the same year Argenta took over the branch network and name of the Office Central de Crédit Hypothécaire, known in Dutch as the Centraal Bureau voor Hypothecair Krediet, a public mortgage institution created in 1936. The sources used for this guide do not say how the Centraal Bureau voor Hypothecair Krediet operated during the occupation of 1940–1944.

A pole star, an apple and a cubist redraw.

Argenta’s visual history is unusually well recorded on its own website. Its first advertisement, the company says, appeared in 1960 in the Catholic weekly Kerk en Leven and was illustrated with a drawing of a pole star. When the firm became a savings bank in 1965, it says, the change “cried out” for a new logo: an apple, paired with the slogan “Een appeltje voor de dorst,” a Dutch saying about putting something aside for later.

The apple stayed. In 1989, according to the company, the logo was given a more cubist, modern shape, drawn as a sketch by Edmond Es, an Argenta employee and illustrator. For its 25th anniversary in 1981 the bank appeared in a dedicated Suske en Wiske comic album, De Zilveren Appels (“The Silver Apples”), in which board members of the time had roles; a year earlier the Argenta logo had appeared in a Nero comic, the company says.

Architecture played its part too. In October 1986 a new head office opened on the old foundations of the Belgiëlei townhouse: a postmodern building designed by Bart Van Rompuy, son of the founder Karel Van Rompuy, according to the company. Between 2015 and 2020 the building was largely rebuilt, and staff moved back in 2020.

The tone of voice is plain on purpose. The company describes its approach as clear and sober, and says it wants financial products to be understandable, “in begrijpelijke taal,” in plain language. In early 2023, it says, Argenta decided to invest more in the recognisability of its brand and launched the umbrella concept “Doen we niet. Doen we wel.” (“We don’t do that. We do do this.”), which names the things the bank deliberately does and does not do, and which has since run through its television and radio campaigns. Everyday accounts are sold as named packages, Green, Silver and Gold, and the app, launched in 2014 as “Argenta Bankieren,” is presented as the main place to arrange things yourself.

How Benelux banks present themselves.

Banks in the Netherlands, Belgium and Luxembourg tend to present themselves with restraint. The usual starting point is a clear sans-serif wordmark, often paired with a simple symbol, set in one or two strong colours. Green, orange, red and blue recur across the region, and many of the names are short: initials, contractions of older merger names, or a single coined word that is easy to say in more than one language.

The messages behind those marks often go back to how the banks are owned and what they say they stand for. Cooperative banks put their members and local roots up front, savings banks and state-owned banks point to their public role, and a growing number of banks lead with sustainability, publishing impact reports alongside their annual reports. Several of today’s names were formed by mergers, and their identities have had to carry two or more histories at once.

Language shapes the design work too. Dutch, French and English often sit side by side, and in Luxembourg Luxembourgish and German join them, so type has to stay readable across longer words, accents and switching between languages on the same page. Photography is usually kept to a minimum, with plain layouts, generous white space and simple icons doing most of the work on websites and in apps.

The pages people visit most are practical ones: everyday banking, savings, mortgages, business accounts and the mobile app. Behind them sit the formal documents, from annual and impact reports to investor pages, where the same colours and type carry a more sober tone. For a designer, the region shows how a bank can stay recognisable through colour and a short name while keeping its interface quiet and functional.

A family majority, a client cooperative and no stock listing.

Argenta is not listed on a stock exchange. Its parent, Argenta Bank- en Verzekeringsgroep, has two shareholders: Investar, the holding company of the Van Rompuy family, which owns the majority, and Argen-Co, a cooperative set up in 2010 through which clients and branch holders could become co-owners and share in the dividend, according to the company and Dutch Wikipedia. The company calls itself “partly a cooperative and partly a family business.” Under the holding sit the bank, Argenta Spaarbank, and the insurer, Argenta Assuranties. English Wikipedia notes that Argenta has been treated as a significant institution, supervised directly by the European Central Bank, since European banking supervision began in late 2014.

Not every chapter has been smooth. In April 2018, after planned maintenance over the Easter weekend, Argenta’s internet banking and app ran into problems when new systems were brought into use; the bank switched internet banking off for a time, sent visitors to a page of apologies and admitted it had underestimated the impact, Tweakers reported on 4 April 2018. Dutch Wikipedia says customers could hardly make transfers through the apps for close to a week.

Today Argenta presents itself as a bank and insurance group for families, active in Belgium, the Netherlands and Luxembourg, with a head office on the Belgiëlei in Antwerp and a network of offices across Belgium. Dutch Wikipedia ranked it in 2025 as the fifth bank in Belgium by size, after BNP Paribas Fortis, KBC, Belfius and ING. Its range covers accounts and cards, savings and investment funds, home and personal loans and property and life cover, and in 2025 it opened up to a new group of clients, entrepreneurs, with a first campaign launched on 21 November 2025, the company says.

For a design guide, Argenta shows how a modest symbol, kept and redrawn rather than replaced, can carry a brand for decades: a pole star, then an apple, then a cubist apple, held together by a plain voice. Compare KBC and Belfius, two other Belgian banks. For this guide we use a deep green, cream and an apple red with a sans, an unofficial interpretation; no product or logo is reproduced.

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