BTG Pactual is a clear leader in using digital investment to drive service innovation, client satisfaction and private banking performance. It has always been a leading private bank in Brazil (and, latterly, throughout Latin America as well), but its embrace of digitalization has enabled it to pivot its full-service investment platform to a much wider audience than its traditional wealth-management clientele.

The judges have acknowledged BTG Pactual’s hard-earned reputation as one of the leading banks for high net-worth individuals in Brazil – and increasingly beyond.

The echoes of 2014 have been loud in Brazil’s private banking industry over the past 12 months. A precipitous fall in interest rates – followed by a meteoric rise – has left the market completely the same but also very different.

BTG Pactual’s recent success has been based in large part on the digital platform that it has built in recent years. The bank targets opportunities where financial deepening, disintermediation and technological adoption intersect in Latin America.

BTG Pactual isn’t new to winning Euromoney’s regional awards for excellence – but previous successes have been for the bank’s investment banking franchise. This year, Euromoney recognizes BTG Pactual’s successful reversal of the orthodox model of business evolution from retail and corporate banking to investment banking.

While the main story of the 2022 Latin America awards is the emergence of BTG Pactual as a retail force, the bank’s senior management team, headed by chief executive Roberto Sallouti, clearly hasn’t let the investment banking team take its eye off the ball.

Best Bank: BTG Pactual

The bank has achieved growth by extending its traditional private banking services to the mass affluent segment in Brazil.

Ricardo Lacerda launched a boutique investment bank in the aftermath of the 2008 financial crisis. Having finally succeeded in IPOing his firm at the third attempt, he now looks to navigate it through Brazil’s turbulent waters.

State-owned Caixa Economica cashes out of its Pan investment with R$2 billion profit.

The bank has retrenched, rebranded and grown since 2015.

This year, the region’s best investment bank is BTG Pactual. It climbed back to leadership in its domestic market and grew strongly elsewhere in the region.

The firm has done well at home and in the region. Part of that is down to its ownership structure, and the rest is because growth is part of its DNA.

$2.5 billion deal makes bank more profitable and a purer ‘Latam’ play; CEO says still huge upside on valuations, and revenue growth to come.

Bank says rationalization of retail branch networks will boost growth; head of its digital platform hints at wider retail banking services.