The SGB Group, for Spółdzielcza Grupa Bankowa (lit. 'Cooperative Banking Group'), is the second-largest Polish cooperative banking group behind the BPS Group. It relies on the Poznań-based central financing entity SGB-Bank, which served 174 local cooperative banks as of mid-2025.[1]
The group's origin was the establishment in 1990-1991 of Gospodarczy Bank Wielkopolski (GBW) in Poznań, which renamed itself as SGB-Bank in 2011 following multiple mergers.
History
GBW was the first of a number of regional banks created in the 1990s to compete with BGZ Bank for the provision of wholesale financial services to local cooperative banks.[2]
By 1993, 117 local cooperative banks had opted to become affiliated with GBW instead of their prior reliance on BGZ Bank for central financial services. France's Crédit Mutuel group became a shareholder of GBW.
By 2000, GBW had formed a so-called "G-2" group together with Bałtycki Bank Regionalny (BBR) in