BCP Brand Guidelines: Lima’s Banco Italiano of 1889, Credicorp & the Cuy Mágico

Italian merchants in Lima, 1889.

BCP began as the Banco Italiano, founded in Lima by Italian merchants living in Peru. It opened for business on 9 April 1889, according to both the English and Spanish Wikipedia articles, which give different dates for its incorporation earlier that year. Spanish Wikipedia says it started with five employees in a small rented office that had belonged to the old Banco de Lima. Within twenty years it had branches in Callao, Chincha, Arequipa and Mollendo, and it had set up an insurer, the Compañía de Seguros Italia.

In the 1920s, Spanish Wikipedia says, the bank modernised its management with staff recruited in Italy with the support of the Banca Commerciale Italiana. Its new head office in central Lima, designed by the architect Ricardo de Jaxa Malachowski, opened around the bank’s 40th anniversary: Spanish Wikipedia gives 21 April 1929 for the inauguration, while English Wikipedia dates the building to 1928.

When war broke out between Italy and Ethiopia in 1935, the bank faced a campaign claiming that it was subject to the Italian government; its management answered that it was governed by Peruvian law, both Wikipedias say. In 1941 the Romero family, owners of several haciendas, bought the bank, and in 1942 it was renamed Banco de Crédito del Perú, on 21 January according to English Wikipedia and on 1 February according to Spanish Wikipedia.

Credicorp, Yape and a guinea pig.

Under its new name BCP opened subsidiaries in Nassau and New York and, later, moved its head office to the La Molina district of Lima. That building was designed and built between 1988 and 1990 by the US firm Arquitectonica, led by Bernardo Fort-Brescia and Laurinda Spear, ArchDaily wrote in its “Clásicos de Arquitectura” series, and English Wikipedia says the Miami chapter of the American Institute of Architects gave it a Test of Time Award in 2004. Spanish Wikipedia adds that in 2014 the bank refitted its tower in San Isidro with a large LED facade and modified its logo.

BCP went into Bolivia in 1994 by buying Banco Popular, the origin of today’s BCP Bolivia. In 1995 it became the main bank of a new holding company, Credicorp: Spanish Wikipedia says Credicorp was formed that year under Bermuda law through a share exchange that brought together BCP, Atlantic Security Holding and the insurer Pacífico, and in October 2025 Credicorp held an investor day in New York marking the 30th anniversary of its New York Stock Exchange listing, according to its own announcement. The group added microfinance with Edyficar in 2010, which in 2014 took over and merged with Mibanco, both Wikipedias say. In 2017 BCP launched Yape, a mobile wallet; English Wikipedia, citing the bank, says it had more than 19.1 million active users at the end of 2025.

BCP’s most recognisable brand device is a character. In October 2008, the Gestión marketing blog recalled in July 2012, BCP and the agency Circus launched a campaign for a business credit card in which a magical guinea pig, the Cuy Mágico, offered money to two people who had none; the closing line told viewers that if they did not have a magic guinea pig, they should go to BCP. The character soon became the face of the bank’s campaigns for small businesses, with a costume made in Argentina and remote-controlled gestures, the blog wrote, and Peruvians took it up as a kind of national mascot, quoting it in conversation and on television.

In May 2012 Gestión listed the Cuy Mágico, in a campaign for BCP’s small-business insurance, among the animal mascots at the centre of that year’s Effie advertising awards in Peru. English Wikipedia says the character was still in use in December 2024, in a Christmas savings campaign at the Mega Plaza shopping centre.

Banks of Latin America.

Latin American banks tend to present themselves through a few strong signals rather than many small ones. A bold wordmark or a simple symbol, set in one dominant colour, does most of the work: reds, blues, oranges and yellows recur across the region, sometimes chosen to echo a national flag, as English Wikipedia says of Banco do Brasil’s blue and yellow. Some banks go further and commission their own typefaces, as Bradesco did with Bradesco Sans in 2020, according to the Brazilian site B9.

The copy is written in Spanish or Portuguese first, and the photography is local: branches, city streets, customers at work and families at home. Product pages are built around the same practical headings almost everywhere — accounts, cards, credit, insurance and the bank’s own digital apps.

Banks in the region also present a public side that goes beyond banking products. Financial-inclusion programmes, foundations and cultural institutes appear alongside the commercial pages; Fundação Bradesco has worked in education since 1956, and the Centro Cultural Banco do Brasil runs cultural centres in several Brazilian cities. Sport sponsorship, from national teams to motor racing, carries the colours further still.

Many of these banks are listed companies, so annual and integrated reports are part of the identity too, setting out history, ownership and governance in a consistent house style. This guide sets out what can be checked about each bank — when and where it was founded, who owns it and how it presents itself — and treats its palette as our own interpretation rather than an official specification.

Peru’s largest bank by assets, on regulator data.

BCP is the largest bank in Peru by total assets, according to data from the country’s banking regulator, the Superintendencia de Banca, Seguros y AFP (SBS), cited by both Wikipedias for December 2025. Spanish Wikipedia says the bank is owned by Credicorp, directly and through its subsidiary Grupo Crédito, and that its Bolivian arm grew through the purchases of Banco Popular in 1994, Banco de La Paz in 1998 and Banco Boliviano Americano in 1999. Its retail business is organised in three tiers, Banca Consumo, Banca Exclusiva and Banca Enalta, English Wikipedia says, and the bank also runs Warda, a fee-free digital savings account reached through its app or Yape.

BCP has faced regulatory action. In July 2024 the Lima newspaper La República reported that the SBS had sanctioned the bank over contributions made in 2010 and 2011 to a presidential campaign without the required disclosure. In January 2025 Gestión reported that Peru’s personal-data authority, part of the Ministry of Justice, had fined BCP for collecting users’ facial biometric data through its online complaints book beyond what was needed and for storing it without valid consent; both sanctions were confirmed on appeal, and the authority ordered corrective measures.

For a design guide, BCP shows how a bank can build recognition through a character as well as a mark: a guinea pig created for one card campaign that became part of everyday Peruvian conversation. Compare Bancolombia, another Andean bank founded in the 19th century, and Santander, the Spanish banking group. For this guide we use a deep blue and a warm orange with sky and cream, with a geometric sans, an unofficial interpretation; no product or logo is reproduced.

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