Its shareholders included local nobility (Pallavicino and Balbi), bankers (Quartara, Polleri) and merchants (Lagorio, Dodero, Bacigalupo).

It became a major source of funding for Italian industry in the prosperous years 1896-1913, especially iron and steel, electric power, sugar-beet refining, urban transportation, and chemicals.

At the start of the First World War, the executive directors of Credito Italiano and of Banca Commerciale Italiana, the other dominant Italian universal bank which had also benefited from the support of German financiers, were officially in favour of neutrality.

[5] However these banks were the subject of a campaign by both Italian nationalists, spearheaded by L'Idea Nazionale and Liberals grouped around Francesco Saverio Nitti.

In 1921 it opened offices in Paris and Berlin and later contributed to the establishments of Banca Italo Egiziana (1924) and National Bank of Albania (1925).It was highly profitable in the boom years 1922 – 1925, thanks to the success of Italian industry.

Credito Italiano, along with two other "bank of national interests", BCI and Banco di Roma, had formed Mediobanca in 1946.