The following list of banks in France is to be understood within the framework of the European single market and European banking union, which means that the French banking system is more open to cross-border banking operations than peers outside of the EU.
European banking supervision distinguishes between significant institutions (SIs) and less significant institutions (LSIs), with SI/LSI designations updated regularly by the European Central Bank (ECB). Significant institutions are directly supervised by the ECB using joint supervisory teams that involve the national competent authorities (NCAs) of individual participating countries. Less significant institutions are supervised by the relevant NCA on a day-to-day basis, under the supervisory oversight of the ECB. [1] In France's case, the NCA is the French Prudential Supervision and Resolution Authority, hosted within the Bank of France and known by the acronym ACPR. [2]
As of 1 September 2025, the ECB had the following 12 French banking groups in its list of significant institutions. [3]
Of these, BNP Paribas, BPCE, Crédit Agricole, and Société Générale have been consistently designated as Global systemically important banks (G-SIBs) by the Financial Stability Board, including in the update of November 2025. [4] A study published in 2024 assessed that the bank with most aggregate assets in France (as opposed to total consolidated assets, as of end-2023) was Crédit Agricole at nearly €2 trillion, followed by BNP Paribas (€1.5 trillion), BPCE (€1.4 trillion), Société Générale and Crédit Mutuel (€1 trillion each), and La Banque Postale (€738 billion). [5]
As of 1 September 2025, the ECB's list of supervised institutions included 93 French LSIs, 5 of which were designated by the ECB as "high-impact" on the basis of several criteria including size: [3]
LCH SA meets the criteria for SI designation, but has been classified by the ECB as a LSI by special derogation together with a handful of other financial market infrastructures. [3]
The Bank of France, Agence Française de Développement, and Caisse des Dépôts et Consignations, both based in Paris, are public credit institutions that do not hold a banking license under EU law.
Numerous former French banks, defined as having been headquartered in the present-day territory of France, are documented on Wikipedia in English. They are listed below in chronological order of establishment. Many of these were colonial banks that had most of their operations in French colonies but were nevertheless based in Metropolitan France, generally in Paris, for at least part of their existence. For example, the Banque de l'Algérie was originally headquartered in Algiers, but relocated its head office to Paris in 1900.
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