BPCE Brand Guidelines: Two Cooperative Networks Joined in 2009 Under One Purple Circle

A savings bank and a cooperative bank.

BPCE is younger than its banks. The group was formed in 2009, but its two networks date from the nineteenth century, and the group’s own history page traces its heritage over “more than two centuries.” The name joins the two: Banque Populaire Caisse d’Epargne.

The older strand is the savings bank. According to BPCE, the first Caisse d’Epargne et de Prévoyance opened in Paris in 1818, with the philanthropist Benjamin Delessert among its founders, to give people of modest means a reliable way to save; the passbook account, the livret, became its symbol. The savings banks were recognised as institutions of public utility in 1835 and spread across France, later financing social housing and local facilities, the group says.

The second strand is cooperative credit. The first Banque Populaire opened in Angers in 1878, prompted by the Capuchin friar Ludovic de Besse, to lend to craftspeople, shopkeepers and small business owners whom other banks overlooked. A law of 1917, the loi Clémentel, set out the status and role of the popular banks, BPCE says. The sources used for this guide do not say how the savings banks and popular banks operated during the occupation of 1940–1944.

After 1945, the group says, the savings banks financed housing, urban development and public facilities, while the popular banks widened their customer base to the liberal professions and then to private individuals. The savings banks became credit institutions in 1983 and cooperative banks in 1999.

From joint venture to merger.

The two groups drew together in stages. In 2006 they combined their investment-banking arms, Natexis Banques Populaires and Ixis, to create Natixis, owned in part by each. The financial crisis of 2008 hit that joint subsidiary hard, and the parents moved to a full merger. French Wikipedia says the new central body was recognised by law on 19 June 2009, and English and French Wikipedia both date the formation of BPCE to 31 July 2009, bringing together the networks’ two central institutions, the Caisse Nationale des Caisses d’Epargne and the Banque Fédérale des Banques Populaires.

The French state supported the new group during the crisis with preferred shares and subordinated debt; French Wikipedia says BPCE had repaid the state in full by March 2011.

The structure is cooperative. BPCE is the central institution; according to French Wikipedia, its capital is held equally by the 14 Banques Populaires and the 15 Caisses d’Epargne, which are in turn owned by their customers as cooperative members, or sociétaires. BPCE’s own profile counts 9.6 million cooperative members and lists the 14 popular banks — two of them national, CASDEN and Crédit Coopératif — and the 15 savings banks. The two networks keep their own names and, French Wikipedia notes, sometimes sell identical products under separate brands; English Wikipedia describes them as separate and, to an extent, competing.

The group later took full control of its investment bank. BPCE announced an offer for the Natixis shares it did not own on 9 February 2021; after the offer closed on 9 July it held 91.8 percent, and the remaining shares were compulsorily acquired on 21 July 2021, when Natixis left the Paris stock exchange, according to BPCE’s release of 13 July 2021 and Le Figaro. French Wikipedia says the Natixis businesses were then reorganised as Natixis Corporate & Investment Banking, Natixis Investment Managers and Natixis Wealth Management, managed directly by BPCE.

How French banks present themselves.

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 purple circle above two networks.

BPCE presents itself as a “universal cooperative bank,” a phrase that runs through its releases and profile, and its profile calls it the second-largest banking group in France. Its website lists the businesses that sit under the group name: the Banque Populaire and Caisse d’Epargne networks and Palatine in France; in Europe, novobanco in Portugal and the consumer-finance business Oney; internationally, Natixis Corporate & Investment Banking and Natixis Investment Managers. Wikipedia says the group agreed to buy most of novobanco in 2025 and took full control in April 2026. English Wikipedia adds that in 2018–19 the group folded Crédit Foncier de France into its other businesses and retired that brand, and that in July 2024 it bought the Belgian private bank Nagelmackers through Caisse d’Epargne Hauts de France. It has been supervised directly by the European Central Bank since 2014, English Wikipedia says.

Its visual identity bridges two older ones. French Wikipedia describes the BPCE logo as a purple circle, and says the same purple was used for the Natixis mark of 2009, chosen to merge the red of the Caisse d’Epargne with the blue of the Banque Populaire.

Sport is where the group name has been most visible. On 1 January 2019, BPCE says, the group and its companies — Banque Populaire, Caisse d’Epargne, Natixis, CASDEN, Crédit Coopératif and Banque Palatine — became the first Premium Partner of Paris 2024, and from 2019 to 2024 they also partnered the French Olympic and Paralympic team. The company ties this to its brands’ older sponsorships in sailing, surfing, skiing and handball, and its website now has a section that presents it as a bank for the sports economy. In 2024 it launched a strategic plan called VISION 2030.

For a design guide, BPCE shows how a group can sit above two strong network brands without replacing them, with a central mark in a colour that blends theirs. Compare Banque Populaire and Caisse d’Epargne, its two networks. For this guide we use a plum, a network blue and a savings red with a sans, an unofficial interpretation; no product or logo is reproduced.

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