KBC Group

Volksbank van Leuven, local savings banks and Middenkredietkas

On 17 July 1889, a group of prominent Catholics founded the Volksbank van Leuven ("People's Bank of Leuven"), a cooperative bank to finance the development of business in and around Leuven.

In the early 1890s, the Boerenbond farmers movement, similarly inspired by Catholicism and corporatism and also based in Leuven, led the development of burgeoning network of rural cooperative banks inspired by the model created in Germany by Friedrich Wilhelm Raiffeisen. The first of these Spaaren Leengilden ("savings and loans associations") was created in 1892 in the village of Rillaar near Aarschot. By 1895, there were 24 Spaaren Leengilden; that year, the Boerenbond established the Middenkredietkas ("central credit fund") as a central body to help them manage their customers' savings and access funding from the Caisse générale d'épargne et de retraite, a national financial institution. In 1902, the network had grown to 190 local savings banks, and would further expand to 378 by 1913 and 1099 in 1934. In 1903, the Middenkredietkas decided to reduce its exclusive dependence on the CGER and established a permanent relationship with the Volksbank van Leuven for the management of some of the farmers' savings.

Algemene Bankvereeniging, Bank voor Handel en Nijverheid, Almanij

After World War I, the Middenkredietkas strengthened its structural cooperation with the Volksbank van Leuven, which in 1919 had transformed itself into a joint-stock company. The two institutions jointly sponsored the creation or acquired control of several other banks in Dutch-speaking Belgium, including the Algemeene Bankvereeniging (ABV, "General Banking Association"), founded in 1921 in Antwerp, and two banks named Bank voor Handel en Nijverheid (BHN, "Bank for Trade and Industry") respectively in Ghent and Kortrijk. On 1 October 1928, ABV and the Volksbank van Leuven merged. The new entity, which kept the name Algemeene Bankvereeniging, was controlled by the Middenkredietkas; in 1930 it acquired BHN Ghent, which in the meantime had merged with a number of other local banks in East Flanders, and in October 1931 purchased another financial group, the Crédit Général de Belgique also known as Crédital. The latter combination resulted in the creation in 1931 of the holding company Almanij in Antwerp, which received a number of industrial company stakes. As a consequence, the Boerenbond-controlled banking cluster became one of Belgium's largest credit institutions, able to rival the Banque de Bruxelles and Generale Bank. The Boerentoren high-rise building in Antwerp, financed by ABV, was the second-tallest skyscraper in Europe at the time of its completion in 1931, just behind Madrid's Telefónica Building (1929). It became the symbol of the Boerengroup's financial might, to the dismay of some of the Catholic clergy including Cardinal Jozef-Ernest van Roey who feared that the farmers' movement was drifting away from its religious roots and towards commercialism.

Kredietbank