Governance

Compliance useful to society

With its medium-term Smart Compliance for Society project, the Compliance business line reaffirms its desire to implement regulations operationally and to promote an ethical culture within the Group.

“Faced with the development of increasingly complex financial crime, one of the missions of Compliance is to strengthen its means of detection. In 2023, the use of modern and evolving technologies, including artificial intelligence, helped better identify atypical financial flows that could be related to money laundering and/or terrorist financing”.

  • Three pillars for six major goals that are fully in line with the Group’s Raison d’être and Project.

    Societal Project

    • Preventing and combating financial crime
    • Working towards sustainable finance that respects social commitments, by developing an ethical approach

    Human Project

    • Strengthening the commitment of the business lines
    • Empowering the Compliance business line teams even more by encouraging innovation, initiative and skills development

    Customer Project

    • Contributing to protecting our customers and differentiating ourselves through a transparent and fair relationship
    • Promoting the fluidity of our customer relationships by using new technologies

  • As a responsible bank that cares about both its customers’ interests1 and the commitment of its employees, Crédit Agricole Group places the utmost importance on ethics. The Compliance function has rolled out a set of reference documents which, along with legal and regulatory requirements, cover three prescriptive tiers.

    In addition, the process of developing new products, services and activities systematically includes an ethical analysis, which takes into account environmental, social and governance (ESG) aspects.

    Code of Ethics

    This affirms our commitments, our identity and our values of local presence, responsibility and solidarity. It also highlights our principles of action with regard to our stakeholders that must be respected every day through ethical behaviour.

    Find out more

    Codes of Conduct

    These translate the principles of the Code of Ethics into standards to be applied operationally in a form adapted to the specific nature of each entity’s activities, to guide the actions, decisions and behaviour of each individual on a daily basis.

    Find out more

    Corpus Fides

    A collection of internal procedures that identify the rules that Group entities, executives and employees must follow, and which operationally reflect compliance-related regulatory changes.

    The compliance mechanisms put in place by the Corpus Fides are described in the Non-Financial Performance Declaration.

    Find out more in the 2023 URD

    Ethics are promoted through regular awareness-raising campaigns for employees, executives and directors, which take various forms: a range of dedicated in-person and e-learning courses, fun campaigns (cartoons, videos) and an annual quiz.

    1 87% of customers surveyed as part of the 2023 CSR barometer consider ethics to be a priority issue for banks

    Ethics awareness 97% of Crédit Agricole Group employees were trained in the “Professional ethics and conduct” module in 2023.

  • Crédit Agricole Group has a whistleblowing system whereby any employee who witnesses an irregularity, an offence or a crime within their entity can report it and benefit from the protection provided to whistleblowers. The system guarantees total confidentiality of the information provided as well as anonymity (when this option is chosen by the whistleblower).

    More than 490 whistleblowing reports have been received since the implementation of this system in 2019.

    A sharp increase in the number of reports was observed in 2023 (+45% vs. 2022), as a direct result of the communication campaign.

Protecting vulnerable customers

The customer protection provided by Smart Compliance for Society includes the identification of and support for customers experiencing financial difficulties. These may be people who are over-indebted, banned from banking or who have accumulated payment incidents.

Compliance contributes to the training and control systems that allow advisors to support these vulnerable customers in their best interests. In this way, they can ensure that the products held or subscribed to are adequate for the needs expressed and the financial situation of these customers.

In terms of prevention, Compliance has also contributed to the roll-out of a predictive algorithm that detects the warning signs of potential financial difficulties, allowing support to be provided at an early stage.
A certified anti-corruption system

The renewal of the ISO 37001 certification obtained by the Crédit Agricole Group for its anti-corruption management system in 2022 was confirmed in 2023, making it the only French international banking group to be certified.

Awarded to Crédit Agricole by Euro Compliance* in 2016, this certification recognises the Group’s determination to prevent corruption and the quality of its anti-corruption programme. It certifies that corruption risks have been identified and analysed and that the programme applied by Crédit Agricole is designed in such a way as to limit these various risks through adherence to international best practices. ISO 37001 certification covers all of Crédit Agricole Group’s business lines in France and abroad, its 154,000 employees and 54 million customers.

* Euro Compliance is a certification and training organisation specialising in the fight against corruption.