Cajamar Cooperative Group

The Cajamar Cooperative Group (Spanish: Grupo Cooperativo Cajamar) is the largest grouping of agricultural cooperative banks (Spanish: cajas rurales) in Spain, with origins in the establishment in 1966 of Caja Rural de Almería, rebranded in 2000 as Cajamar Caja Rural.

Whereas Cajamar Caja Rural remains the group's most significant component, its national entity is Banco de Crédito Social Cooperativo, SA (BCC), a Madrid-headquartered bank established in 2014 by Cajamar Caja Rural and 31 other local agricultural cooperative banks. BCC has been designated as a Significant Institution since the entry into force of European Banking Supervision in late 2014, and as a consequence is directly supervised by the European Central Bank.

BCC acts as a central entity serving the financial needs of the local cooperative banks which together form the Cajamar Group. The Cajamar Cooperative Group was designated by the Bank of Spain as an institutional protection scheme, with the BCC as head entity. Under that arrangement, the individual local banks are exempt from solvency and liquidity requirements as these are supervised on a consolidated basis. In effect, the group's 18 local banks operate like branches, with no managerial independence.

Other entities of the Cajamar Group include Cajamar Vida and Cajamar Seguros Generales (insurance), Cimenta2 Gestión e Inversiones (asset management), as well as the Cajamar Foundation and the Plataforma Tierra digitalization initiative.