Pierre Giffo was born in 1918 in Lesneven, in northern Brittany on the edge of the Léon region where his father had been appointed a local GP during the war. A graduate from the Paris faculty of law, he first served as chief clerk in a notary’s office. Then, in 1939, he had a brief spell in the 39th Infantry Regiment in Rouen. 

Pierre GIFFO and the French savings bank

On October 1, 1940, Pierre Giffo joined the Caisse d’Epargne d’Abbeville to replace the head of the Revue des Caisses d’Epargne’s legal department, who was called up to the army. In October 1942, he moved to the savings bank in Besançon in eastern France as a trainee general secretary before being appointed exceptional (hors classe) General Secretary in March 1943. At the same time he was entrusted with running the legal department of the Revue des Caisses d’Epargne, of which he became editor/manager and where he continued to provide legal advice, an activity that won him the praise of his peers. At the same time, he also worked with the general agent of the Abbeville savings bank on co-drafting an updated version of the Code Cormont for 1939-1941 (published in December 1942).

In August 1945, with the support of René Laurent who, at that time, was in charge of the Bureau Central des Caisses d’Epargne, he joined the Rheims savings bank as General Secretary. In July 1947, he became manager of the Rheims Caisse d’Epargne, a post he would only leave in 1982 when he retired. During this period, he managed and chaired the Groupement d'Étude Technique de la Champagne Ardenne and contributed to the creation of the GREP Lorraine Champagne regional savings and provident insurance group in Nancy, of which he became Chairman in June 1982.
In 1982, Pierre Giffo became a member of the Board of Directors of the savings bank he had chaired for 35 years and was subsequently elected Chairman of the Steering & Supervisory Board
In 1986 he published a work entitled Les Caisses d’Epargne 1940-1985, in which he drew a panorama of the French savings banks from the Liberation to the laws of 1983 and 1984.