Awards for Excellence 2020
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CaixaBank’s response to the coronavirus crisis started with a recognition of the vital role of its physical network, which reaches more small and isolated communities than any other bank in Spain.
It kept 90% of this network open, even while half of its branch staff and 98% of the staff in central services and subsidiaries worked remotely.
The bank has a market share of around 30% among the over-65 age group. During the crisis it worked to support these older clients, given their increased vulnerability to the virus and risk of isolation. It phoned all clients over 75 years old to offer advice and support, for example, and implemented measures to help pensioners avoid queues at bank branches.
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Jordi Gual |
As the biggest group represented publicly by the Spanish savings banks’ federation, CaixaBank’s involvement in industry-wide initiatives has been crucial. It has processed hundreds of thousands of requests for repayment holidays by mortgage and consumer borrowers, and brought forward pension and unemployment payments for around five million clients.
“In times of hardship, you respond to the needs of the client,” CaixaBank’s chairman, Jordi Gual, told Euromoney earlier this year. “They don’t forget that. It’s why they do business with you in the good times.”
It has sought to look after the needs of its small and medium-sized enterprise clients in particular. It made €25 billion of additional pre-authorized working-capital loans available to domestic SMEs and self-employed people, lending €14 billion to businesses during the first weeks of the emergency. It then handled €12 billion of state-guaranteed loans for 143,000 clients.
In addition to discounts and waivers of point-of-sale terminal fees to hard-hit retailers, it launched Social Commerce, a new tool to enable retailers to sell through their social media profiles, without the need for a separate, standalone website.
It also organized an online course alongside the El Bulli foundation to tutor restaurateurs in the financial management of a crisis.
VidaCaixa led the Spanish insurance industry’s contribution to promote collective life insurance cover for all Spanish healthcare workers for six months in the event of death or hospitalization due to the coronavirus. Meanwhile, foundation la Caixa, which is the banking group’s majority owner, also stepped up voluntary work to tackle loneliness and support food banks, among other things.
