A cooperative and mutualist identity

Crédit Agricole’s cooperative organisation

Close to 11.8 million mutual shareholders form the foundation of the cooperative organisation of Crédit Agricole and make it the world’s largest cooperative and mutualist group.

The mutual shareholders own the capital of the 2,395 Local Banks in the form of mutual shares. These Local Banks are represented on the Boards of Directors of the 39 Regional Banks. The mutual shareholders elect their representatives, the directors of the Local Banks, who in turn elect the directors of the Regional Banks.

An elected Chairman and a Chief Executive Officer appointed by the Board of Directors of the Regional Bank are in charge of governance.

The Regional Banks have a cooperative governance system, which by nature is responsible and fair. According to the democratic principle of “1 person = 1 vote”, each mutual shareholder has the same weight in voting in Local Bank Annual General Meetings, regardless of the number of mutual shares held.

More than 27,000 directors elected each year share their expectations within the Group’s bodies and ensure good knowledge and consideration of customer needs. The pooling of these experiences is the heart of the cooperative model, which promotes customer-focused action.

Three principles: usefulness, universality and availability

Our Raison d’être expresses clearly and concretely our principles of action for society, for customers and for employees: a strategic framework for everyone, which we must all integrate into the heart of our activities and our development.

Usefulness

Societal usefulness lies at the very origin of the creation of Crédit Agricole. Its determination to work in the interest of society as a whole and to make progress accessible to everyone has always guided Crédit Agricole’s actions:

• transformation of agriculture,
• electrification of rural areas,
• access to banking services for all,
• democratisation of access to property ownership,
• banking access via new technologies,
• access to wealth management advice
• and, today, support for the energy and environmental transition.

Universality

Crédit Agricole is focused, in principle, on serving everyone, in all regions, and using all channels to address the wealth management concerns of its customers.

Availability

This combination of societal usefulness and universality has made it possible to create a global and sustainable model for banking relationships.

The Group has created an original model, based on relationship banks, which brings together the products and services of the Group’s specialised business lines to form a universal customer-focused banking model.

Availability is also reflected in the Group’s long-standing presence in the regions to serve their development.