Banco Interfin
Banco Interfin’s five-year strategic plan is paying dividends. Last year, the bank boosted net profits by a record 33.9% to $21.5m, while RoE rose from 17.94% to 21.72%.
In the past 12 months, Banco Interfin has undertaken a strategic review of its processes to find ways of cutting costs. It has grown significantly in terms of assets, branch coverage and revenue, without adding to its staff. It formed a number of strategic alliances with large corporates to handle their treasury functions, providing a wide range of services, from payroll to credit cards and employee mortgages.
Interfin invested heavily in renewing its transactional and core business system, and it has been active in acquisitions in its home market and in Nicaragua and El Salvador. Interfin is now Costa Rica’s largest bank in terms of assets.
These past years have become milestones for Interfin. After successfully migrating its IT platform, its results began to soar. “Our results have made Interfin a very attractive investment opportunity for worldwide banks, several of which showed interest in some kind of deal,” says CEO Luis Liberman. “Scotiabank offered to acquire up to 100% of the bank’s shares and the deal was closed on September 2006. We expect to merge Banco Interfin SA and Scotiabank of Costa Rica sometime in the first half of 2007.”
