[3][4] The first local cooperative bank inspired by the Raiffeisen system on what is now French territory was created in February 1882 in La Wantzenau, a village near Strasbourg.

Louis Durand (1859-1916), a lawyer in Lyon, was inspired by the Raiffeisen model and started a similar network from 1893, grouped under the Union des caisses rurales et ouvrières de France (UCROF).

In 1958, new legislation remodeled the group's governance and established the Confédération Nationale du Crédit Mutuel as its central organization in Paris.

[6] Citibank sold multiple retail units across Europe and the world to reduce risk and focus on core activities like corporate and investment banking.

In France, the group's main retail network is formed of around 2,000 individual local Crédit Mutuel banks (French: caisses), which are owned by their customers in line with the Raiffeisen system.

As of early 2022, these included Crédit Industriel et Commercial, a significant banking group which is older than Crédit Mutuel itself, purchased in stages between 1998 and 2017; subsidiaries that host consumer credit (Cofidis), real estate, asset management, insurance, private equity, factoring and leasing; Groupe EBRA [fr], a fully-owned media group active in Eastern France; and 96% of the Banque européenne du Crédit Mutuel (BECM), a specialized bank that provides property lending in France and Germany.

Other affiliates outside of France include: The federations outside of the Alliance fédérale are those of Brittany (headquartered at Le Relecq-Kerhuon near Brest) and Sud-Ouest (in Bordeaux), which together form a grouping called Crédit mutuel Arkéa with its own brand identity; Maine-Anjou-Basse-Normandie (MABN, in Laval); and Océan (in La Roche-sur-Yon).

Crédit Mutuel's corporate motto is "La banque qui appartient à ses clients, ça change tout!"