Desjardins Group

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Desjardins Group

Type	Cooperative
Founded	Lévis, Canada (1900)
Headquarters	Lévis, Canada
Key people	Alban D'Amours, President & Chief Executive Officer
Industry	Financial services
Products	Checking Accounts Insurance Stock Brokerage Investment Bank Asset-Based Lending Consumer finance
Employees	39,294 (2005)
Website	www.desjardins.com

The Desjardins Group (or Mouvement des caisses Desjardins in French) is the largest association of credit unions in North America. It was founded in 1900 in Lévis, Québec by Alphonse Desjardins.

Located mostly in Québec but also in Ontario, Manitoba, and New Brunswick, it is composed of 568 local caisses populaires, which serve almost 5.4 million members. The entire system is regrouped into 11 regional federations.

Total assets at Desjardins Group currently reach $118.068 billion CAD. This ranks it as the sixth-largest financial institution in Canada and the largest in Québec, ahead of National Bank of Canada which had assets of $77 billion CAD as of Oct. 2003. It has 39,294 employees and 7,184 elected and volunteer officers. In 2005, it gave its members $408 million CAD in patronage allocations and $58 million CAD in donations, sponsorships and academic scholarships^[1]. Most of this latter sum went to regional economic development and health purposes.

Desjardins Group has recently started trying to expand outside the province of Quebec, its biggest push being deployed in brokerage services, regrouped under a unit it now calls Desjardins Financial Security. This brokerage operation is based in Montreal but has a notable presence in Toronto.

Desjardins has been working in developing countries such as Burkina Faso and Cameroon, but in 1992 also opened Desjardins Bank in Florida to cater to southbound Quebecers, particularly snowbirds and retirees; this latter practice has also been adopted by a number of the banks in Canada.

Desjardins is a member of: