Citizens Financial Group, Inc. is a regional bank headquartered in Providence, Rhode Island, tracing its roots to 1828 when High Street Bank was established in the city. In 1871, High Street Bank created its own savings bank, Citizens Savings Bank, and the Citizens name has been part of the company’s heritage since that year. Citizens became a wholly-owned subsidiary of the RBS Group in 1988 and returned to independence through a 2014 initial public offering. The company operates approximately 1,000 branches across 14 states and the District of Columbia. [1]
Design and History
Citizens’ current logo combines a wordmark with an emblem known as the “daisy wheel,” a symbol that originated with its former parent company, The Royal Bank of Scotland Group. The daisy wheel was introduced by RBS in 1969, following the merger of National Commercial Bank of Scotland into the Royal Bank of Scotland. The newly enlarged bank wanted to create a strong brand and introduced the symbol, which was devised from piles of coins arranged into patterns and depicted four inward-pointing arrows. [2]
In November 2004, Citizens announced it would update its logo to combine the graphic symbol of its parent company, RBS, with the Citizens and Charter One names. The new logo retained the Citizens Bank and Charter One names and the Citizens signature green color. The Citizens “C” was updated with a contemporary symbol featuring four arrows pointing toward the center, placed in front of the bank name. The change was timed to coincide with Citizens’ acquisition of Charter One Financial, which provided an opportunity to update the bank’s 20-year-old brand mark as thousands of sign changes were needed across the new Midwest footprint. [3]
Citizens’ spokeswoman Kathy O’Donnell explained that the new graphic identity stood for a combination of the local foundation and operation of Citizens and the financial reach of RBS. New England customers began seeing the new logo in March 2005, with the green “C” morphing into a green daisy wheel by the third quarter of that year. The logo appeared before Citizens and Charter One on all bank signage, checks and ATMs. [4]
In June 2014, Citizens Financial Group announced a unified brand strategy that anchored all of its brands in the Citizens name. As part of this strategy, the company rebranded its more than 200 Charter One branches in Michigan and Ohio as Citizens Bank by mid-2015, creating a consistent Citizens Bank presence across its 11-state retail footprint. The Commercial Banking division transitioned from RBS Citizens to Citizens Commercial Banking, and consumer lending businesses serving customers outside the retail footprint were branded Citizens One. The rebranding was part of the company’s effort to separate from RBS and establish Citizens as a standalone company. [5]
Meaning and Symbolism
The daisy wheel symbol depicts four inward-pointing arrows, representing the bank’s efforts to accumulate and concentrate wealth in its customers’ interests. The squareness of the symbol was intended to emphasize reliability. [2] The symbol is based on an arrangement of 36 piles of coins in a 6 by 6 square, representing the accumulation and concentration of wealth by the Group. [6]
When Citizens adopted the symbol in 2005, the bank’s chairman Larry Fish stated that the new logo recognized and maintained the value of the well-known local identities of Citizens Bank and Charter One while adding a symbol reflecting the bank’s strength and size in the financial marketplace. The redesign underscored Citizens’ ability to provide the advantages of a local focus combined with the stability, products and services of one of the world’s leading banks. [3]
Typography and Design
The Citizens logo uses a green color scheme. A 2005 trademark application filed with the United States Patent and Trademark Office for the CITIZENS BANK mark described the color green as appearing in the text of the wording and in the stylized representation of a daisy located to the left of the wording. [7]
Following the 2014 separation from RBS, Citizens was granted a license to use trademarks such as the RBS “daisy wheel” logo for a period of 10 years. [8]
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