The Bundesverband der Deutschen Volksbanken und Raiffeisenbanken (BVR) is the nationwide representative body of the Cooperative Financial Group.

In the later 1840s, economist Franz Hermann Schulze-Delitzsch started organizing the creation of cooperatives by local communities of craftsmen or farmers in his home town of Delitzsch, in the Prussian Province of Saxony, and promoted national legislation to encourage it.

Also in 1864, Schulze-Delitzsch led the creation of the bank Soergel, Parrisius & Co. in Berlin, also known as Soergelbank, to serve as central financial institution for the Allgemeiner Verband.

[4] In 1872, another social reformer, Wilhelm Haas [de], created an agricultural purchasers’ association German: landwirtschaftlichen Konsumverein in Friedberg, Grand Duchy of Hesse.

[4] In 1901, Karl Korthaus [de] initiated a second network of professional cooperatives alongside the one created a half-century earlier by Schulze-Delitzsch, represented by the Hauptverbandes der deutschen Gewerblichen Genossenschaften in Osnabrück.

In 1904, its losses led it to merge into Dresdner Bank, which set up specialized departments in Berlin and Frankfurt to serve its cooperative clientele.

In April 1920, Schulze-Delitzsch's Allgemeiner Verband and Korthaus's Hauptverbandes merged their respective organizations to form the Deutsche Genossenschaftsverband (DGV), which became the national entity for all urban professional cooperative banks.

[4] In 1933, like other civil society organizations, the cooperative movement became the target of the Nazi government's Gleichschaltung policy of eradicating diversity and dissent.

During World War II, savings were directed towards investment in government bonds as part of the regime's policy of financial repression.

In 1975, new federal legislation redefined the role of the DGK, renamed it DG Bank, and allowed it to gradually take over the Cooperative Group's regional financial institutions.

The next year, DG Bank started developing an international network, with its first offices abroad established in New York and Hong Kong.

In July 1990, with German reunification, DG Bank assumed the role of central financial institution for the still existing and new Kreditgenossenschaften in East Germany.

In 2000, two of the remaining regional entities, Suedwestdeutsche Genossenschafts-Zentralbank AG (SGZ-Bank) in Frankfurt, a successor to the Landwirtschaftliche Genossenschaftsbank of Darmstadt, and Genossenschaftliche Zentralbank (GZB-Bank) in Stuttgart merged to form GZ-Bank.

In the official statement the police said that bank security officer noticed smoke coming from the deposit room on Monday morning (January 14).

[9] In 2024 it became public knowledge, that the Federal Financial Supervisory Authority had criticized the Düsseldorf-Neuss branch of the Volksbank for insufficient measures against money laundering.

The company GIC International, allegedly founded in 2012 by the Iranian Ghadir holding, an entity of the regime in Iran, and sanctioned by the United States, did business with the Volksbank.

[10] As a result, Kiabi requested the money back from the Volksbank Düsseldorf-Neuss and the Financial Supervisory Authority replaced the management in November with a special representative.

With the increased integration of the formerly separate Volksbanken and Raiffeisenbanken networks, the Cooperative Group has created a blue-orange color code that blends features of the two previous logos, respectively a stylized "V" and a house gable motif with sculpted horseheads, the latter already present during Raiffeisen's lifetime.

The Bundesverband der Deutschen Volksbanken und Raiffeisenbanken (BVR) represents the Cooperative Financial Group nationally and before European institutions.