Raiffeisen Switzerland Brand Guidelines: Bichelsee 1899, St. Gallen & a Red Wordmark

A priest, his sister and a village savings bank.

Raiffeisen Switzerland, in German Raiffeisen Schweiz, began in a village in the canton of Thurgau. German Wikipedia says the first Swiss Raiffeisen bank opened in Bichelsee in 1899, on the initiative of the Catholic priest Johann Evangelist Traber. The bank’s own history adds that his sister, Veronika Traber, kept the books, looked after customers and handled the correspondence, and was the first person to pay her savings into the new bank; her brother called her “Madame la Directrice.”

The model came from Germany. German Wikipedia says the self-help ideas of Friedrich Wilhelm Raiffeisen and Hermann Schulze-Delitzsch found many followers across Europe, above all in rural areas, and the Swiss federation took Raiffeisen’s name, the bank’s history says. On 25 September 1902, three years after Bichelsee, Traber and others founded the Schweizerischer Raiffeisenverband, the Swiss Raiffeisen federation; German Wikipedia says ten institutions took part. Its first statutes, of 12 June 1902, set the aim of furthering public welfare on a Christian basis, under the motto “one for all, all for one,” according to the bank’s history.

The early years were not smooth. From 1906 a cooperative bank in St. Gallen acted as the central clearing house for the local banks, but a dispute over a central fund of the federation’s own came to a head in January 1912, when Traber and the whole board resigned at a meeting in Olten, the bank’s history says. The federation then moved from Bichelsee to the city of St. Gallen; German Wikipedia says St. Gallen has been its seat in practice since 1912 and in law since 1936. The movement spread through all four language regions. The first bank in Ticino opened at Sonvico in 1923, and by 1930, the history says, 516 local banks had joined the federation.

The name changed several times. German Wikipedia says the federation became the Verband Schweizerischer Darlehenskassen in 1920, the Schweizer Verband der Raiffeisenkassen in 1973 and the Schweizer Verband der Raiffeisenbanken in 1990, and has been Raiffeisen Schweiz Genossenschaft since 2006. The local banks dropped the old word “Raiffeisenkasse” in 1990 and have been called Raiffeisen banks since.

Wartime vaults, a cooperative federation and a pared-back mark.

The Second World War shaped the federation’s work, the bank’s history says. In January 1939 it sent the local banks rules for a general mobilisation, and on 1 September 1939 it collected securities, mortgage deeds and precious metals from 250 local banks near the border and took them to rented vaults at Hochdorf, in the canton of Lucerne. In 1940 the leadership planned to move its seat from St. Gallen to Melchtal, in Obwalden, and sent goods there, but did not move once the situation eased; the valuables stayed away until the autumn of 1940. During the war years, the history adds, loans from the local banks paid for land improvements that enlarged the area under the plough, in support of the federal food-supply programme known as the “Anbauschlacht,” and in 1941 the delegates met on the Rütli meadow.

The structure is unusual. German Wikipedia says the 212 legally independent Raiffeisen banks are cooperatives in their own right and together hold all the cooperative capital of Raiffeisen Switzerland, so the local banks own the central body rather than the other way round. Raiffeisen Switzerland provides central services such as information technology, infrastructure and refinancing, runs risk management and control, and leads the group under banking law; each Raiffeisen bank has one vote at its general meeting. German Wikipedia counts 761 branches, about 3.7 million clients and about 2.1 million cooperative members, and calls the group the second-largest Swiss banking group. On 16 June 2014 the Swiss National Bank classed it as a systemically important bank for the domestic market. Members’ unlimited joint liability was abolished in 1989 and replaced by a capped duty to pay in more capital, which was itself dropped in 2014.

The visual identity is documented by the bank itself. Its history says the first Raiffeisen logo in Switzerland was drawn in 1942 by an embroidery designer from St. Gallen: ears of grain for bread, a key for security and the outline of a honeycomb for the industrious bee, a call to save. It was used unchanged until 1952. In the 1950s and 1960s the four ears became three; in 1973 the logo appeared in red, blue and yellow, later joined by a band in the three colours and the “Raiffeisen” lettering. Since 1 March 2006, the history says, only the “Raiffeisen” wordmark and the colour red remain. Earlier objects carry the same thrift message: a metal home savings box of around 1900 could be opened only at the bank. The first Raiffeisen television advertisement ran in 1999 under the line “Wir machen den Weg frei” (“we clear the way”), and in 2000 the group introduced a museum pass for its card holders.

Design and documentation.

Cooperative and ethical banks sit in a corner of finance where the ownership model is part of the message. A cooperative bank is owned by its members, who usually buy shares and vote at a general meeting; an ethical bank sets out which sectors it will and will not lend to. Many institutions do both, and their identities tend to say so plainly, with wordmarks in strong single colours — orange, green and red among them — and names that point to a place, a farming root or a founding idea.

Their websites follow a recognisable pattern. Beside pages on current accounts, savings, mortgages and business lending, they usually carry a section on membership: how to join, how many shares a member needs, and how voting works. GLS Bank in Bochum, for example, gives each member one vote at its annual general assembly regardless of how many shares they hold, according to German Wikipedia.

Imagery tends towards the local and the collective: branch fronts, regional offices, member meetings and the projects a bank has financed, from housing to renewable energy and schools. Statements of values and sustainability policies are given prominent space, and they are presented as the bank’s own commitments rather than as independent findings. GLS Bank goes further than most by publishing its business loans in its customer magazine, Der Bankspiegel, German Wikipedia says.

The paper trail matters as much as the logo. These banks publish annual reports, and many add impact or sustainability reports that set out where deposits went. This guide uses those documents, encyclopaedias and dated press reports to record when each bank was founded, how its local banks and central institutions merged, and how it describes its own structure, keeping the bank’s claims attributed to the bank.

Governance, a single platform and a new organisation.

The group has also faced its regulator. On 14 June 2018 the Swiss Financial Market Supervisory Authority, FINMA, announced that it had concluded enforcement proceedings against Raiffeisen Switzerland on corporate governance, opened in October 2017. FINMA found that the bank had handled conflicts of interest inadequately and that its board had not exercised adequate oversight, a serious breach of supervisory law; it ordered measures to improve governance, noted the steps the bank had already taken and appointed an independent reviewer to check them. German Wikipedia records that in May 2018 the group sold the private bank Notenstein La Roche to Vontobel and chose to build up its own investment business.

Other changes followed. In January 2019 all of the group’s banks moved onto one banking platform, German Wikipedia says. The group left the Swiss Bankers Association on 31 March 2021 and rejoined at the end of August 2023. From 2023 the former Raiffeisen branches in Zurich and Basel have traded as independent cooperative banks, after local people subscribed the share capital, the bank’s history says. In August 2026 Swiss public broadcaster SRF reported that Raiffeisen Switzerland would cut up to 180 jobs by 2027 under a savings programme, more than half through natural turnover, unfilled posts and early retirement, out of about 13,000 staff across the group, and that from October 2026 it would be organised in six departments.

The Raiffeisen name goes back to a German movement, but Raiffeisen Switzerland is owned by the Swiss Raiffeisen banks themselves, German Wikipedia says. It describes its principles as local roots, closeness to customers, the cooperative structure and a cautious lending policy, and says the banks aim to keep customer money in their own region.

For a design guide, Raiffeisen Switzerland shows how a cooperative federation can reduce a busy emblem of grain, key and honeycomb to one word and one colour. Compare Rabobank, another federation of farmers’ banks, and Desjardins, whose identity also draws on the bee and the honeycomb. For this guide we use a mountain red, ink and grain gold with a sans, an unofficial interpretation; no product or logo is reproduced.

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