Spuerkeess Brand Guidelines: Luxembourg’s 1856 State Savings Bank & a 2020 Rebrand

Founded by statute in 1856 and owned by the state ever since.

Spuerkeess, Luxembourgish for “savings bank,” is the trading name of the Banque et Caisse d’Épargne de l’État, Luxembourg. Its history page says that on 21 February 1856 the Chamber of Deputies approved the framework act that created the Caisse d’Épargne, which the bank calls the country’s first and only savings bank and today the oldest financial institution in Luxembourg. English Wikipedia names Grand Duke William III as founder under that law and says the bank has been wholly owned by the Luxembourg State since 1856. A law of December 1858 added a state guarantee on deposits.

The first board, three members chaired by Professor Nicolas Martha, met on 18 August 1859, with a staff of an accountant and an attendant, the bank says. Its first counters were in the government’s former building on the Marché-aux-Herbes, now the Grand Ducal Palace. From 1862 foreigners could open savings accounts, and the bank says deposits reached one million Luxembourg francs in 1869.

Its role widened in the twentieth century. The bank lists a mortgage bank, the Crédit Foncier, from 1900 and an affordable-housing department from 1906, followed in 1929 by a social-housing service run on behalf of the state. Between 1909 and 1913 the Luxembourg architect Jean-Pierre Koenig designed its headquarters at the head of the Avenue de la Liberté, a building Luxembourgish Wikipedia describes as neo-Renaissance with Art Nouveau elements. In 1928 the savings bank was a founding member of the Luxembourg Stock Exchange, and it says it remains the exchange’s largest shareholder. Lending to private individuals against collateral followed in 1937.

The Second World War broke that line. After the German invasion of 10 May 1940, the bank’s own history says, the Luxembourg and Belgian francs were replaced by the Reichsmark, and the savings bank and the mortgage bank were abolished and replaced by four regional savings banks on the German model, in Luxembourg City, Diekirch, Esch and Grevenmacher, under German management. The same page says that no transactions were recorded on 85 per cent of the former savings bank’s accounts during the occupation. During the liberation of 1944–45, General Omar Bradley of the 12th US Army Group set up his headquarters at 2 Place de Metz, now one of the bank’s buildings. A decree of 25 October 1944 re-established the savings bank and let it handle all the business German savings-bank rules had allowed, making it in effect a full-service bank.

School savings, a gallery and a new name.

Much of what the bank is known for at home grew after the war. It says it helped create Luxembourg’s first investment fund, Eurunion, in 1959, and in 1961 revived school savings: first-year pupils received a savings book with a starting balance and a porcelain savings box, a tradition it says continues today. A ministerial decree of 12 April 1972 let it add “State Bank” to its name, and a law of 14 June 1983 placed it under common law. Before the Luxembourg Monetary Institute was set up in 1983, Luxembourgish Wikipedia says, the savings bank also issued Luxembourg franc banknotes.

The present corporate name, Banque et Caisse d’Épargne de l’État, Luxembourg, shortened to BCEE, came with a law of 24 March 1989 that reflected its status as a universal bank. The bank moved its head office to 2 Place de Metz in 1987 and built the Rousegäertchen building between 1988 and 1994, linked to the older buildings by a tunnel fifteen metres underground that opened in stages from 1991. In 1994 that tunnel became the Am Tunnel contemporary art gallery, which since 2000 has included a space for the work of the Luxembourg-born photographer Edward Steichen; a bank museum opened in the former teller hall in 1995.

Digital banking began in 1996 with the website bcee.lu and S-Line, an offline PC-banking product, followed in 1999 by the S-net internet banking service. In 2006 the bank set up an investment company, Lux-Investment Advisors, renamed BCEE Asset Management in 2011. Since November 2014 it has been directly supervised by the European Central Bank as a significant institution, according to English Wikipedia and the bank. In 2015 it bought the former ARBED steel company headquarters on the Bourbon Plateau.

The brand change came in 2020. The bank’s history page records a new corporate identity and a new logo, with the brand repositioned on the commercial name Spuerkeess while the legal name stayed the same, and a new advertising line, “Your Bridge to Life.” On 18 October 2019 it became the first Luxembourg signatory of the UN Principles for Responsible Banking, Luxembourgish Wikipedia says.

Benelux banking.

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.

Housing, savings and a national network.

The bank describes itself as offering “tradition and banking innovation since 1856” and says it runs the largest network of branches and self-service banking spaces in Luxembourg, with about 1,800 employees. Its statutory missions, as English and French Wikipedia give them, are to promote saving, to make access to housing easier and to support the development of the national economy. English Wikipedia ranks it one of the largest banks in Luxembourg by total assets.

Housing remains central. At the press conference on its 2025 annual report, RTL Today reported in April 2026, the bank said it had approved 5,500 new home mortgages in 2025, most of them for existing buildings, and that it was searching for a new director general. The bank’s website now names Benoît Elvinger as chief executive, and Luxembourgish Wikipedia gives 1 October 2026 as his start date.

Its signature stake in national life goes beyond banking. Luxembourgish Wikipedia lists holdings in companies including the stock exchange, the airline Luxair, the cargo airline Cargolux, the satellite operator SES and the insurer Lalux; the bank’s own buildings, from Koenig’s headquarters to the ARBED building it renamed 19 Liberté, form much of its public face alongside the Am Tunnel gallery and the bank museum.

For a design guide, Spuerkeess shows how an old public institution can trade under a short, local name while keeping a long legal one. Compare ING and BNP Paribas, two banking groups with guides here. For this guide we use a deep blue, slate and a brick red with a sans, an unofficial interpretation; no product or logo is reproduced.

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