Crédit Agricole

Is Crédit Agricole safe?

Yes. Crédit Agricole is one of the most strongly capitalised big banks in Europe. At 30 June 2026 the group's CET1 ratioCET1 ratioA bank's highest-quality capital (mainly shares and retained profits) as a share of its risk-weighted assets. Higher means more room to absorb losses.More in the glossary was 17.2%, against a requirement of 10.4%, a buffer of 6.8 percentage points. Its customer deposits of €1,176 billion come mostly from French households and small firms. We score it 80/100, ahead of BNP Paribas at 77 and Société Générale at 74, mainly because of that capital cushion and a lighter conduct file.

Who holds your money: regional bank, LCL or Crédit Agricole S.A.?

This is the part most customers never check. Crédit Agricole is a cooperative group. Retail customers bank with one of its regional banks (Caisses régionales), which are owned by local members and in turn control the listed Crédit Agricole S.A. LCL, the former Crédit Lyonnais, is a separate bank owned by Crédit Agricole S.A. The entity name and bank code on your RIB tell you which one you have.

All of them are covered by France's Fonds de Garantie des Dépôts et de Résolution (FGDR): €100,000 per customer per bank for current accounts, savings books and term deposits, paid within seven working days. Livret A, LDDS and LEP balances carry a separate €100,000 state guarantee. Money received in the three months before a failure from a house sale, inheritance or severance pay gets extra temporary cover of up to €500,000 per event.

The group also has an internal legal solidarity mechanism: Crédit Agricole S.A., as central body, must ensure the solvency of every bank in the network, and the regional banks guarantee its obligations in turn. It is designed so that one weak regional bank is supported by the rest of the group.

Outside France the answer depends on the country. On 8 October 2026 the group launched Crédit Agricole Deutschland, a digital bank for German retail customers that builds on about one million existing German customers of group businesses. The announcement did not say which legal entity holds the deposits or which guarantee scheme covers them, so German savers should check the bank's name in the account terms first.

Two capital ratios, both comfortable

Crédit Agricole reports figures for the whole group and for the listed Crédit Agricole S.A.

Measure, 30 June 2026	Group	Crédit Agricole S.A.
CET1 ratioCET1 ratioA bank's highest-quality capital (mainly shares and retained profits) as a share of its risk-weighted assets. Higher means more room to absorb losses.More in the glossary	17.2%	11.3%
CET1 requirement	10.4%	8.7%
Leverage ratioLeverage ratioA bank's Tier 1 capital divided by its total exposures, without adjusting for risk. It is a simple backstop to risk-based capital rules.More in the glossary	5.5%	3.7%
LCRLiquidity coverage ratioA bank's cash and easy-to-sell assets compared with the money that could flow out in a 30-day crisis. It must be at least 100%.More in the glossary (12-month average)	136%	141%
NSFRNet stable funding ratioA bank's stable funding, such as capital and retail deposits, compared with the stable funding its assets need over one year. It must be at least 100%.More in the glossary (31 March 2026)	119%	114%

The group figure matters most for a depositor, because the solidarity mechanism makes capital flow inside the group. Liquidity reserves were €475 billion, more than twice its short-term market debt. Senior preferred debt is rated A1 by Moody's, A+ by S&P and AA- by Fitch, all with stable outlooks; Fitch affirmed AA- in August 2026.

The Greek losses and other history

Crédit Agricole came through 2008 without a rescue, though it took €3 billion of state capital at the end of that year, under the scheme for all large French banks, and repaid it in 2009. Its harder years were 2011 and 2012, when losses at Emporiki, the Greek bank it had bought in 2006, and write-downs on other acquisitions pushed Crédit Agricole S.A. into net losses. It sold Emporiki to Alpha Bank in 2012. The cooperative regional banks stayed profitable throughout.

Fines and enforcement

The conduct file is lighter than at most global banks:

• October 2015: Crédit Agricole and its investment bank paid $787.3 million to US authorities, including a $90.3 million Federal Reserve penalty, over transactions breaching US sanctions. This sits at the edge of our ten-year window.
• February 2026: the European Central Bank imposed €7.55 million of periodic penalty payments because the bank had missed a 2024 deadline to assess its climate and environmental risks. Crédit Agricole called it a purely administrative penalty and said it had met the requirements.

Neither case touched retail deposits.

Phishing is the everyday risk

In June 2026 researchers uncovered a phishing campaign that sent about 7,000 fake emails a day to Crédit Agricole customers, telling them to re-register a "trusted device". 912 people typed their login details into a fake site, and fraudsters then phoned them to push through payments. The bank says its own systems were not breached. Its apps use SécuriPass to approve logins and payments.

How to protect your savings

1. Read your RIB to see whether your account is with a regional bank, LCL or another group entity, and keep ordinary deposits at each within €100,000.
2. For larger sums, use a bank in a different group. Do not rely on two Crédit Agricole entities to double your cover without confirming it with the FGDR.
3. Remember that parts sociales and life insurance are not deposits; they fall under different, more limited guarantees.
4. Never re-register a device or approve a SécuriPass request because an email or caller asks you to. Open the app yourself.

How we scored it

Deposit protectionDeposit insuranceA government-backed scheme that repays bank customers up to a set limit if their bank fails, such as the FDIC in the US or the FSCS in the UK.More in the glossary (89) and capital (88) are the strongest factors, and liquidity (84) is solid. Stability history (68) is the weakest, for the state capital in 2008 and the Greek losses, followed by conduct (66). Crédit Agricole also owns Crédit Agricole Italia and 29.3% of Banco BPM; for one of the Italian banks it competes with, see UniCredit.