One of the targets accomplished by the internship made by the national institution to some executives of the Banco Popular of Costa Rica was to expose BancoEstado’s experience in matters related to human capital and organizational structure.
The above mentioned internship strengthened the relationship and allowed the professionals from the Banco Popular de Costa Rica, one of the most important Banks in that Central-American country, to exchange experiences.
In all, four Costa Rican managers arrived to Santiago in July 26 to participate in a nine-speeches cycle aimed at knowing some relevant aspects of the BancoEstado business plan, as well as the development of its e-channels and online banking system, as well as the features of the Small Business Guarantee Fund (FOGAPE), and representative projects as Cuenta-RUT and Caja-Vecina.
The executives from the Banco Popular attended the speech given by Hernán Saavedra, E-Channels Manager from BancoEstado.
Likewise, participants obtained an in-depth knowledge in two key matters within any modern organization: human resources and corporate social responsibility.
The delegation from Costa Rica - formed by Geovanny Garro, Assistant Business Manager; Fabián Chaves, Chief of Strategic Planning; Maurilio Aguilar; Chief of Risk Management, and Omar Sánchez, Central Region Channels Director – was quite satisfied by the good reception from BancoEstado and for being able to share different business visions. They were grateful for the opportunity and willingness of the local executives.
Professionals of the Costa-Rican Bank together with Enrique Errázuriz, Planning and Studies Assistant Manager, and Marcos Gaínza, Management Accounting Manager of the entity.
Besides the speeches, visitors had the chance to visit some offices of BancoEstado as well as the Mortgage Center, which is very important as this Chilean bank is the entity with the highest amount of clients in this segment.
“We had good references about BancoEstado and we wanted to better know how they work here. There are many interesting things, mostly in terms of the offices’ operating system and the opening of current accounts, that we will apply for sure in our bank, because they are very close to the model we want to develop”, explained Geovanny Garro.
Fabián Chaves, on the other hand, assessed the quality of the contents addressed during the internship and explained that “the information received and the special attention given to us were excellent. We leave with a very good impression and this will undoubtedly motivate us to improve our client service, in order to repeat somehow what we could see here”.
Visitors attended as well the speech given by Cecilia Vergara, Consumers Business Manager of BancoEstado, and Marta Barros, Business Chief of Consumers Branch.
Banco Popular de Costa Rica
The Banco Popular de Costa Rica emerged in 1969 under the Special Law 4.451, which transformed what was initially a capitalized savings fund created in 1901, called Monte Piedad. Its main target was and still is to “promote development and provide economic protection for workers nationwide”.
Until today, the Asamblea Nacional de Trabajadores [National Workers Assembly] is in charge of defining the guidelines and trends of the bank’s general policy.
Even though this bank was created by a special law and is ruled by public right, it is not a State institution. It is currently the third bank in Central America, with 3.050 employees and 100 offices.
Its target market is mostly focused in Consumers banking; it counts on a development banking portfolio (micro and small companies - MIPYMEs), and assists the Social Economy sector as well (cooperatives and solidarity associations, amongst others).