THE THREE PRINCIPLES THAT GUIDE OUR ACTIONS Usefulness, universality and availability

A true compass in the storm, the Group’s Raison d’Être is just as meaningful in the times of economic, climatic and social uncertainty that are now opening up before us. It expresses clearly and concretely our principles of action for the company, for customers and for employees: a strategic framework for everyone, which we must all integrate into the heart of our activities and our development. It is an essential asset for the Group, both multipolar and built on a shared history and a shared ambition. Over the course of a century, Crédit Agricole, drawing on its mutualist roots, has succeeded in combining a local customer focus with a global scale.

USEFULNESS

Societal usefulness lies at the very origin of the creation of Crédit Agricole. The 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, financial emancipation for women, 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 through our societal project.

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 that links its relationship banks to its business lines: customer-focused universal banking model. The Group is organised on the basis of relationship banks, on global and sustainable relationships, which bring together the products and services of the Group’s business lines to form the Universal Customer-focused Banking model.

An organisational model that links the global to the local. The Group’s relationship banks, sustainably rooted in the regions, responsibles for the global relationship with customers; the Group’s leading and high-performing business lines whose primary mission is to serve the Group’s banks as effectively as possible.

“The three principles that guide our actions: usefulness, universality, availability

Our Raison d’Être, reflected in our Group Project, expresses the three mutualist principles that have guided Crédit Agricole’s actions since its creation: societal usefulness, the universality of our offer, accessible to all, and availability to our customers. It is also what makes us unique.

Our usefulness to society emerged with our desire to transform agriculture in the 19th century and has endured since then through all the societal changes that have taken place: opening up of access to banking services for all, democratisation of access to property ownership, digitalisation, etc. And today we are supporting the climate transition by ensuring that we strengthen social cohesion.

The universality of our offer, which reflects our values of solidarity, enables us to meet the expectations of all our customers, from the most modest to the wealthiest, be they VSBs, farmers or listed companies, in France and abroad.

Our third principle, and by no means the least of them, which combines human responsibility and availability, is also the fruit of our Group’s history. As France’s biggest banking network with 7,400 branches, Crédit Agricole has a special role in the regions at a time when local action is becoming a driver for the economy and social cohesion. Drawing on the complementarity and expertise of its numerous business lines and its 147,000 employees around the world, the Group has succeeded in creating a unique model that forms the foundation of its development: customer-focused universal banking model. ”