Desjardins Group
Canadian association of credit unions
The Desjardins Group (French: Mouvement Desjardins, pronounced [muvmɑ̃ deʒaʁdɛ̃]) is a Canadian financial service cooperative and the largest federation of credit unions (French: caisses populaires) in North America. It was founded on December 6, 1900 in Lévis, Quebec by Alphonse Desjardins. While its legal headquarters remains in Lévis, most of the executive management, including the CEO, is based in Montreal.
As of 2017, Desjardins Group consists of 293 local credit unions operating 1,032 points of service and serving more than seven million members and clients, mostly in the provinces of Quebec and Ontario. Desjardins Group also operates the services of the former Canadian division of State Farm which was then acquired in 2015.
In addition to retail banking, the Group has over twenty subsidiaries offering products and services related to insurance (Desjardins Financial Security, Desjardins General Insurance), real estate (with its Complexe Desjardins offices in Montreal and Quebec online estate agent DuProprio), venture capital funds (Desjardins Venture Capital), and brokerage (Desjardins Securities). The Desjardins Group, through subsidiary Développement international Desjardins, is also active in over 30 developing countries through technical assistance programs and various investments. In October 2020, Desjardins launched a social impact fund, Aequitas, which could grow to 115 million dollars and help women and youth in developing countries.
History
After studying European credit institutions established in the 19th century, Alphonse Desjardins in 1901 came up with an original solution adapted to North America.
In the late 1990s, the number of caisses was reduced from 1275 to 800.
This brief starts where responsible research should: with the source description of “Desjardins Group” as canadian association of credit unions. Everything that follows is an evidence route, not borrowed authority.
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Contemporary correspondence, administrative files and participant testimony can test how later narratives organized the event or institution. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jul 26, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q2933350. VIAF identifies the subject as 137160672. 2 of 3 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1900, 2017, 2015 and 2020.
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This entry incorporates text from “Desjardins Group” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.