Desjardins Group facts for kids
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The Complexe Desjardins in Montreal
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| Cooperative | |
| Industry | Financial services |
| Founded | 6 December 1900 in Lévis, Quebec |
| Headquarters | Lévis, Quebec, Canada |
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Key people
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Guy Cormier, President & Chief Executive Officer, Alphonse Desjardins, co-founder |
| Products | Banking, checking accounts, insurance, stock brokerage, investment banking, asset-based lending, consumer finance |
| Revenue |  Can$20.32 billion (2021) |
 Can$3.53 billion (2021) |
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| AUM | Can$91.26 billion (2021) |
| Total assets | Can$397.09 billion (2021) |
| Total equity | Can$33.53 billion (2021) |
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Number of employees
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53,783 (FTE, 2021) |
The Desjardins Group is a Canadian company that provides financial services like banking and insurance. It is the largest group of credit unions in North America. A credit union is a type of bank that is owned by its members—the people who use its services.
It was started in 1900 in Lévis, Quebec, by a man named Alphonse Desjardins. Today, its main office is still in Lévis, but many of its top leaders work in Montreal.
Desjardins has more than seven million members and clients, mostly in the provinces of Quebec and Ontario. It is also known for buying the Canadian part of the insurance company State Farm in 2014.
Besides banking, Desjardins also offers insurance, helps people buy and sell homes, and invests in new companies. The company also works in over 30 other countries to help their economies grow.
Contents
History
How Desjardins Began
At the end of the 1800s, Alphonse Desjardins studied how banks worked in Europe. He wanted to create a new kind of bank for North America. In 1900, he founded the very first caisse populaire, or credit union, in his hometown of Lévis, Quebec. This new model allowed regular people to save money and get loans in a system they owned themselves.
Growth and Changes
Over the years, Desjardins grew much larger. By the late 1990s, there were many local credit unions, which were combined to make the company stronger.
Between 2008 and 2010, the company's total assets, which is the value of everything it owns, grew from about $152 billion to over $175 billion. This made it the largest financial group in Quebec. In 2008, Monique Leroux became the head of Desjardins, making her the first woman to lead such a large company in Canada.
Desjardins also expanded across Canada. In 2010, it bought Western Financial, which gave it offices and customers in British Columbia, Alberta, Saskatchewan, and Manitoba.
Working with Other Companies
In 2014, Desjardins made a major deal to buy the Canadian operations of State Farm, a large American insurance company. By 2015, State Farm's Canadian customers were served by Desjardins Insurance. For a few years, the State Farm name was still used, but by 2018, it was officially changed to Desjardins Insurance.
Desjardins has also sold parts of its business. In 2017, it sold its pet insurance company, which was known for the brand Petsecure. It also sold other parts of its Western Financial Group business that same year.
2019 Information Leak
In June 2019, Desjardins announced that some personal information of its members and clients had been improperly shared by an employee. The problem affected about 4.3 million people and 173,000 businesses. This was not a cyberattack from outside the company. Instead, an employee with access to the information copied it over time. Police have been investigating the incident.
See also
- Desjardins (disambiguation)
- Mouvement des caisses populaires acadiennes, New Brunswick, is inspired by Desjardins
- List of banks and credit unions in Canada
