Crédit Agricole wants to expand its presence across Europe under its new CEO. With his strategic plan for the period 2026 to 2028, Olivier Gavalda is focusing above all on Germany, where the number of customers is planned to double. „We want to be a market leader in Europe, not only in France and Italy, our traditional markets,“ he said.

In Germany, the bank is already present through its SFS division for specialised financial services, which includes 20 branches of its consumer-credit subsidiary Creditplus Bank. As a result, Crédit Agricole currently has 1 million customers in Germany, 15 billion euros in deposits and 11 billion euros in consumer-loan liabilities. „We will unfold our model as a universal bank by creating Crédit Agricole Deutschland, with the goal of reaching 2 million customers by the end of the period,“ Gavalda recently told journalists.

Crédit Agricole therefore intends to expand its offering in Germany to the full range of savings products, insurance and retail banking services. This is supported by the digital platform of the online bank BforBank, whose offering has been completely revamped to enable expansion into other European markets. In Germany, Gavalda is targeting not only retail clients but also medium-sized and large corporate clients, as he explained to analysts. In the rest of Europe as well, Crédit Agricole is increasingly focusing on mid cap companies.

The goal of the strategic plan is to increase the number of customers from 54 million to 60 million by 2028. The share of revenue generated outside France should rise from 55% to 60%. Revenue is expected to increase from 27.2 billion euros to more than 30 billion euros, and net income from 6.9 billion euros to more than 8.5 billion euros. This would exceed analysts’ expectations, as they had on average forecast a target of 8.2 billion euros.

In its increasingly competitive home market, Crédit Agricole plans to go on the offensive and gain 8 million customers with the help of its three retail banking brands, including the regional banks. LCL will focus on entrepreneurs, self-employed individuals and wealth-management clients, while BforBank is expected to reach break-even in 2028.

In Italy, its second home market, Crédit Agricole also aims to increase the number of customers, from 6 million to 6.5 million. At the same time, Italy’s contribution to the bank’s profit should rise from 15% to 20% by 2028. Crédit Agricole chief Gavalda is open to a closer relationship with Banco BPM. He is still waiting for the green light from the ECB to increase the stake to more than 20%. „I think a merger between BPM and Crédit Agricole Italia would make sense and create synergies", he said.