Credit Mutuel is one of the biggest banks in France. It’s a cooperative banking company, one of 5 largest organizations of such sort in the country. Created in 1882, it was originally a German bank in the province of Alsace-Lorraine. Its current status was acquired after WW1, although Credit Mutuel still uses their former German banking system.
The bank was created in 1882 as a cooperative banking institution with the main goal to offer debts and loans. It was created with the prevalent German banking system at the time, the Raiffeisen system. It doesn’t mean the company bears any relation to the Raiffeisen banks in Austria and elsewhere, however.
The bank got its contemporary name in 1918, when its headquarters found itself on the French side of the border. The name essentially means ‘mutual credit’, which alludes to the initially collaborative nature of the company, which united several Alsatian banks into one big conglomerate.
What is Credit Mutuel?
Credit Mutuel is a French cooperative banking company founded in 1882 by Friedrich Raiffeisen. It has no relation to the big Austrian bank named after the man, but he devised the system used by both entities even now. It’s one of the 5 biggest banking companies in France.
In the 60s, the bank adopted its current logo, which consists of the text part and the emblem in the middle.
The centerpiece of the logo is the emblem, which looks like a triangle with clipped tips (making it an uneven hexagon, essentially). Inside it, there are three white circles that intermingle and creep into one another in a single chained pattern. The borders between them are red, as is the larger shape.
This emblem is typically in the middle, surrounded on each side by the words that are part of the name bit. The name bit is dark blue, written both in uppercase and lowercase. It says ‘Crédit Mutuel’ in a plain sans-serif font, and they often add the slogan ‘la banque à qui parler’ beneath in a similar style, which basically translates to ‘the bank you can talk to’.
The font is a rather simple, official-looking sans-serif without any streamlined cleanness that some of the more modern logotypes use. It gives them the air of professionalism. The motto beneath is typically written in the same font, although in all lowercase and tilted.
The main three colors used in the branding of this bank are red, dark blue and white. The former two are prevalent, and this blue shade is routinely used for various other symbols and emblems associated with the brand.