Cajamar Cooperative Group

Cajamar Cooperative Group
Native name
El Banco de Crédito Social Cooperativo
Company typeCooperative bank S.A.
IndustryFinancial services
Founded2014; 12 years ago (2014)
Headquarters
Madrid
,
Spain
Area served
Spain
Key people
Luis Rodríguez González (President)
ProductsBanking services
Number of employees
6,248 (2023)
Websitewww.bcc.es
Not to be confused with Cajamar, São Paulo.

The Cajamar Cooperative Group (Spanish: Grupo Cooperativo Cajamar) is the largest grouping of agricultural cooperative banks (Spanish: cajas rurales) in Spain, with origins in the establishment in 1966 of Caja Rural de Almería, rebranded in 2000 as Cajamar Caja Rural.

Whereas Cajamar Caja Rural remains the group's most significant component, its national entity is Banco de Crédito Social Cooperativo, SA (BCC), a Madrid-headquartered bank established in 2014 by Cajamar Caja Rural and 31 other local agricultural cooperative banks. BCC has been designated as a Significant Institution since the entry into force of European Banking Supervision in late 2014, and as a consequence is directly supervised by the European Central Bank.[1][2]

BCC acts as a central entity serving the financial needs of the local cooperative banks which together form the Cajamar Group. The Cajamar Cooperative Group was designated by the Bank of Spain as an institutional protection scheme, with the BCC as head entity. Under that arrangement, the individual local banks are exempt from solvency and liquidity requirements as these are supervised on a consolidated basis. In effect, the group's 18 local banks operate like branches, with no managerial independence.[3]

Other entities of the Cajamar Group include Cajamar Vida and Cajamar Seguros Generales (insurance), Cimenta2 Gestión e Inversiones (asset management), as well as the Cajamar Foundation and the Plataforma Tierra digitalization initiative.

History

Cajamar building in Valencia
Head office of Cajamar Caja Rural in Almería

Cajamar Caja Rural was formed by the aggregation of a number of agricultural cooperative banks, its original core being the Caja Rural de Almería (est. 1966).[4] In 2000, the latter merged with its peer in Málaga and adopted the name Cajamar,[5] and also absorbed Grumeco in Madrid. In 2002, it was voted out of the Grupo Caja Rural cooperative group,[6]: 38  and went on to form its own independent grouping including a national representative association, the Business Association of Credit Cooperative Entities (Spanish: Asociación Empresarial de Entidades Cooperativas de Crédito, ASEMECC). Cajamar further absorbed Caja Rural del Duero in 2007, Caixa Rural de Balears in 2010, CajaCampo in 2011, Caja Rural Castellón in 2012, Caja Rural de Canarias and Caixa Rural de Casinos in 2013, and Caixa Albalat in 2018.[7]

In the early 2010s, Cajamar partnered with the 16 cooperative banks of the then Grupo Cooperativo Rurales del Mediterráneo, namely Ruralcaja (Caixes Rurals del Mediterrani), Caixa Rural Torrent, Crèdit València Caja Rural, Caixaltea, Caja Rural de Burriana, Caixa Callosa, Caixa Rural Nules, Caixa Alqueries, Caja Rural de Cheste, Caixa Rural d'Alginet, Caja Rural de Villar, Caixa Rural Vilavella, Caixa Rural Almenara, Caixa Rural Xilxes, Caja Rural Sant Vicent, and Xaixa Rural Vilafamés. Cajamar absorbed Ruralcaja and, with the 15 others plus Caixapetrer and Caixaturís, formed the Grupo Cajas Rurales Unidas (CRU). As a result, by 2019 the Cajamar Cooperative Group had reached its scope of 18 cooperative banks.[8]

As of December 2022, these entities together with BCC had 1.6 million cooperative members and served 3.7 million clients in total. Cajamar Caja Rural was by far the largest of the member banks, accounting for 86.5 percent of their combined business as of 2020.[3]

In addition to the 18 local cooperative banks of the Cajamar Cooperative Group, the shareholders of BCC still included 13 additional entities as of early 2026: the 8 cajas rurales that form the Solventia Cooperative Group, two independent local cooperative banks (Eurocaja Rural and Caixaguissona), plus 3 members of the Grupo Caja Rural, namely Caixalmassora, Caixa Rural Les Coves, and Caixa Vinaròs.[9]

Leadership

See also

Notes

  1. ^ "The list of significant supervised entities and the list of less significant institutions" (PDF). European Central Bank. 4 September 2014.
  2. ^ "List of supervised entities" (PDF). European Central Bank. 1 January 2023.
  3. ^ a b "Research Update: Spain-Based Banco de Credito Social Cooperativo S.A. And Cajamar Caja Rural S.C.C. Rated 'BB/B'; Outlook Stable". S&P Global Ratings. 26 November 2020.
  4. ^ "50 años de Cajamar: sus orígenes en una exposición". Asociación de la Prensa de Almería. 19 April 2016.
  5. ^ Raúl Compés López (8 May 2017). "De milagros agrícolas y financieros: el caso Cajamar y lecciones para América Latina". CAF Banco de Desarrollo de América Latina y el Caribe.
  6. ^ Cajamar Caja Rural: la banca agrícola inteligente del siglo XXI (PDF), CAF Banco de Desarollo de América Latina, 2017
  7. ^ Luis A. Torralba (27 April 2018). "Los socios de la caja rural valenciana Caixa Albalat aprueban en la asamblea fusionarse con Cajamar". ValenciaPlaza.
  8. ^ "Grupo Cooperativo Cajamar". Iberian Property.
  9. ^ "Shareholder cajas rurales". BCC Grupo Cajamar. Retrieved 3 January 2025.
allikas: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cajamar_Cooperative_Group