Brandient has completed the rebranding process of the prestigious Casa de Economii si Consemnatiuni (Savings House), Romania’s oldest banking institution.
Bucharest, May 2008
The launching of the new identity opens a new direction for CEC Bank, while landmarking a giant leap for a state-owned institution. At the same time, it sets an example almost impossible to ignore.
The Brandient team has been working together with the CEC Bank team for more than a year, throughout all the phases of the project: auditing, positioning, reconstruction of verbal and visual identity, retail design, banking product design, communication support and brand engagement programs.
The prestigious stature of CEC (originally an acronym) imposed keeping the name. To this, the “Bank” particle was added as a strategic necessity to prevent the institution from being perceived outside the range of universal banks.
In a growing competitive environment, one of the main reasons for the erosion of CEC’s market position over recent years was its refusal to go by its own history and reputation, thus denying its own identity. This tremendous value has now been brought to light and has become a driving force for corporate rebirth.
CEC Bank is probably the most complex project in Brandient portfolio. It is a reason of professional pride for all of us who have been involved in the revival of this historical brand. The brand engagement sessions held in order to introduce the new identity to the corporate organization—a first for Romanian firms—have been met with a surprisingly positive answer. The new identity was turned into a corporate cohesion vector, also being a change agent, even before it had been publicly launched. I salute the bank’s courageous management for this step.
—Aneta Bogdan, Managing Partner, Brandient
The graphic identity places CEC Bank simultaneously in the zone of tradition and rebirth. It now reflects the trust and stability required and expected from this category. The oak leaf—a national symbol—extracts its uniqueness by means of design as shown on the bank’s new logo. Even those who see it for the first time acknowledge it as having been there for more than one hundred years.
CEC Bank new visual identity was created by Brandient designers Alin Tamasan, Cristian Kit Paul, Eugen Erhan, Bogdan Dumitrache, Cristian Petre, Iancu Barbarasa, under Cristian Kit Paul’s creative guidance.
About Brandient
Brandient is an independent brand strategy and design consultancy founded in Bucharest in 2002 by Aneta Bogdan, Cristian Kit Paul and Mihai Bogdan — never part of a global network, working directly for the owners, CEOs and boards of its clients, with an all-senior team and category exclusivity. In over two decades the firm has created or rebuilt more than 300 brands, 279 of them published as case studies at brandient.com/work — from Romania’s national leaders to brands carried worldwide. The firm has been active in Southeast Asia for more than a decade. The work has earned 84 international awards and distinctions — most recently a Red Dot (2025) and two Graphis Golds (2026) — 64 documented mentions in international design books and publications, and, in 2015, a place among the inaugural inductees of the REBRAND Hall of Fame, alongside Interbrand and MetaDesign.
About CEC Bank
CEC Bank is the oldest banking institution in Romania — founded in 1864 as Casa de Depuneri și Consemnațiuni, wholly owned by the Romanian state, and today the country’s third-largest bank by assets, with its largest physical network and more than two million clients. Brandient led the turnaround rebranding of 2007–2008: the CEC Bank case.