Awards for Excellence 2016
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The origins of the transformation of BanReservas in the Dominican Republic can be traced to July 2013 specifically, when the country’s president, Danilova Medina, appointed Enrique Ramirez as its new CEO. The results have been dramatic, particularly over the past year and BanReservas wins this year’s award for best bank transformation in Latin America.
Ramirez had two key goals: to improve customer service and foster a culture based on leadership. The CEO even visited branches on weekends unannounced, and often unrecognized, to see them in action for himself. The bank broke down business segments and renewed its corporate structure to encourage initiative and responsibility. It replaced its fragmented array of legacy technology systems with a coherent, single platform.
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Enrique Ramirez, |
What makes BanReservas so deserving of the award is that it not only transformed itself, but is also playing a big role in transforming the economy. The bank also brought in talent from local and international competitors to reinvigorate its retail and corporate businesses and to launch new capital markets and investment banking divisions. This helped provide competition to the private sector and shake up the island’s concentrated banking industry. The bank’s exposure to the public sector has shifted from 70% in December 2012 to about 19% in March 2016. Part of the growth in private-sector exposure is focused on core industries that the government has targeted as drivers of growth for the economy. But BanReservas is not subsidizing industry – despite rapid growth to a 37.5% share of loans the bank is increasingly profitable and non-performing loans are 1.44%, below the banking system average of 1.69%.
The improvement in retail banking has been just as impressive. The bank has a 32.3% market share in deposits and has grown products per customer from 1.2 when Ramirez entered the bank to 2.9. The bank also strengthened its capital structure, nearly tripling its paid in capital from August 2014 to March 2016, going from $77 million to $220 million, while increasing its tier-1 capital ratio by 44% to $500 million.
