The Mouvement Desjardins (Desjardins Movement or Desjardins Group in English) is the largest association of credit unions in North America. It was founded in 1900 in Lévis, Québec by Alphonse Desjardins. A credit union is a not-for-profit co-operative financial institution that is owned and controlled by its members, through the election of a volunteer Board of Directors elected from the membership itself. ... World map showing North America A satellite composite image of North America North America is a continent in the northern hemisphere bordered on the north by the Arctic Ocean, on the east by the North Atlantic Ocean, on the south by the Caribbean Sea, and on the west by the... 1900 is a common year starting on Monday. ... Lévis (officially Ville de Lévis) is a city in eastern Quebec, Canada. ... For the 19th-century former mayor of Montreal, see Alphonse Desjardins (politician) Gabriel-Alphonse Desjardins (November 5, 1854 _ October 30, 1920) was born in Lévis, Quebec. ...

Located mostly in Québec but also in Ontario, Manitoba, and New Brunswick, it is composed of 572 local caisses populaires, which serve almost 5.4 million members. The entire system is regrouped into 11 regional federations. The first European explorer of what is now Quebec was Jacques Cartier, who planted a cross either in the Gaspé in 1534 or at Old Fort Bay on the Lower North Shore and sailed into the St. ...

Total assets at Desjardins Group currently reach $103.6 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 38,000 employees and close to 7,500 elected and volunteer officers. In 2004, it gave caisse members $424 million CAD in patronage allocations and $52 million CAD in donations, sponsorships and academic bursaries. 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.

Desjardins is a member of:

• CDIC
• Interac
• NYCE ATM Network
• CBA

Canadian Deposit Insurance Corporation or CDIC is a federal agency that provides insurance (up to a $100,000 CAD per personal and on Canadian accounts only) on financial services provided by chartered Canadian banks and financial institutions. ... Interac Logo Interac Association is a Canadian organization linking enterprises that have proprietary networks so that they may communicate with each other for the purpose of exchanging electronic financial transactions. ... NYCE based in Montvale NJ developed a ATM network that allows card holders to make purchases with retailers with NYCE access using point of sale devices or POS and related ATMs in the United States. ... The abbreviation CBA can refer to: Canadian Bar Association CBA, the CBC Radio One station in Moncton, New Brunswick CBA-FM, the CBC Radio Two station in Moncton Christian Brothers Academy Companhia Brasileira de Aluminio Credit Bank of Albania In basketball: the Chinese Basketball Association, the pre-eminent basketball league...

Sources

• http://www.ica.coop/ica/digest/29-digest.pdf
• Mouvement Desjardins website

See also

• Complexe Desjardins