66 years of bridging local and global banking business

Founded 1950 in Saint Malo CIBP is the first cooperative banking association in the world, representing today 1705 cooperative and popular banks in ten countries on five continents.

For the first CIBP President, Mr. Jacques Basyn the idea of CIBP was: “Se faire connaitre, c`est fair comprendre” – to get to know someone means to learn to understand him. He was also President of Crédit Populaire and organized 1949 together with Mr. Montfajon, managing director of this cooperative bank an international banking congress in Grenoble to kick on an exchange of industry insights and a business networking among peers.

A year later CIBP was founded in Saint Malo by cooperative banking groups from Belgium, France, Italy, Luxembourg and the Netherlands.

After the end of the Second World War it was important for cooperative banks to show that cooperation and collaboration is feasible among European countries to the benefit of small and medium sized enterprises.

Together they wanted to reconstruct the European economy and improve banking technology. For example in 1970 at the CIBP anniversary congress in Saint Malo the topic was “Prospective 2000”. The participants discussed at this occasion how their customers will deal with a “checkless society” and how a society may perform without cash and transactions by electronic media. At that time the internet was even born as ARPA net, Advanced Research Project Agency network of the US defense ministry to enlarge the capacity of the expensive mainframe computers of universities and research institutes.

As it is reported the cooperative banks recognized already at that time, that the business model of banks will change extremely to face the hard competition in the markets. They identified cross- border cooperation and alliances among CIBP member organizations as successful path to provide worldwide excellent business contacts to their members and customers. With TIPA net CIBP members realized a cross border payment system long before SEPA became reality in 2014.

“With GRACE16, a Global Research on Augmented Collaborative Economy, CIBP shows again pleasure in innovating the cooperative banking business model”, CIBP Secretary General Andrea Karner says, “and networking with other cooperative industries”.