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On January 2 2014, Banco Popular Dominicano (BPD) celebrated 50 years of service to its clients and its country. Since its foundation, the institution has initiated its trajectory by providing accessibility, diversification, and modernisation of its products and services, while also supporting entrepreneurs and creating thousands of direct jobs. With almost 7,000 employees full of confidence and merchantable skills, the institution has strived for greatness.
Since its beginnings, BPD has made a social compromise to improve the Dominican nation through smart and sustainable investments, as well as inclusive community programmes. In addition, the bank is financially involved in various programmes of corporate social responsibility (CSR) in areas such as education, health, art, culture and environmental care.
The bank has always been a pioneer in the industry. From the moment the institution opened its doors to the public, it has brought innovative services to the Dominican Republic. In 1964, it became the first private Dominican bank. It was also the first to offer chequing accounts with personal cheques. BPD reinforced its position as a bank with international calibre in 1980 when it became the first Dominican bank to run an international operation. For the first time in the country, a financial institution represented and distributed Visa and MasterCard credit cards. In 1987, BPD initiated Telebanco Popular, an innovative banking service via telephone, unique within the country at the time. The service proved to be extremely effective by allowing clients to consult their accounts from the comfort of their own homes.
$1.4bn
the financing granted to Dominican tourism by BPD in the last decade
App Popular
160,000
downloads
340,000
transactions in 2013
Mirroring the national economy
An important aim at BPD is to facilitate loans to its clients. In December of 1998, the bank launched Autoferia Popular: an automobile fair that offers car loans and car sales all in one location. The fair is now celebrated every year in its headquarters Torre Popular and has, over the past three years, disbursed more than DOP2.5bn ($62.5m) to families and businesses. It is considered the main auto fair in the Dominican Republic and a mirror of how the national economy is going. Continuing with this spirit of facilitating loans to families, BPD launched Feria Hipotecaria in 2005, which assists families with the mortgage loans to help them become homeowners.
The bank offers aid to the fastest growing industry in the country – tourism. In 2003, BPD distributed the first loan in euros in the Dominican Republic to meet the increasing demand of hotels in the country. In 2013, the institution was awarded the title Bank of Tourism, by the Association of Hotels and Restaurants of the Dominican Republic.
Dominican tourism and BPD have had a close relationship that continues to strengthen. In 2013, the bank granted $1.89bn in commercial credits to Dominican companies. The tourism sector was one of the principal beneficiaries of this financing – with the credits representing 61 percent of the total loans received by the national tourist industry last year. In less than a decade, the financing granted to tourism has amounted to more than $1.4bn
Game-changing innovation
For 50 years, BPD has focused its efforts to bring breakthrough services and investments to promote growth in the Dominican Republic. To do so, it has been at the vanguard of innovation, offering security, trust, and unparalleled service.
The bank has brought that innovation by heavily investing in technology. Since 1988 it has been the financial institution with the most technological resources and services. BPD launched the most extensive ATM network in the Dominican Republic in 1989, and integrated the ATM network with Visa and MasterCard services just one year later. Today, the bank’s network consists of over 800 ATMs – a third of all the ATMs in the country.
In 1995, BPD became the first Dominican bank to join the Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication (SWIFT). The integration with SWIFT allowed the bank to quickly process international transactions. It also allowed credit and debit cards issued by Visa, MasterCard, Cirrus, and Plus to do international transactions on 220,000 ATMs all over the world.
By the turn of the millennium, BPD had a state of the art server, and today, the bank’s technological platform is one the most advanced in Latin America. In 2001, its avant-garde development allowed BPD to venture into internet banking via its website, popularenlinea.com. With this foundation already in place, it was also the first Dominican bank to fully incorporate the use of social media to promote tips on savings, community programmes, and transparency. Soon enough mobile banking was launched, allowing clients to quickly access the bank on their smartphones through the mobile app, App Popular. It was the first of its kind in the country and facilitated mobile transactions, while increasing the customer’s security. The mobile app has been downloaded over 160,000 times, with over 340,000 transactions completed successfully in 2013.
In 2011 the bank took the next step in increasing its security by implementing a security token, known as Token Popular. Just two years later, keeping up with the trends of the international industry, the financial institution became the first bank in the Dominican Republic to offer the EMV chip in its debit and credit cards, offering even more security to its clients. The credit and debit cards issued by BPD account for more than 55 percent of the transactions in the market.
Along with the commercial banking services, the financial entity also has a recognised corporate banking team, which offers the right answer to businesses and institutional corporations’ needs in areas such as investment banking, cash management solutions, local supply chain finance or export and import services.
This year, BPD, following the implementation of strategies from previous terms, invested heavily on technological infrastructure to improve the financial inclusion of more Dominican people, launching Sub-agent Popular, a new service that allowed users to have a virtual account with their mobile phones. Clients are able to send and receive payments along with other services in an efficient and simple way. This platform, along with other initiatives, is being developed in order to accomplish the purpose of giving access to financial services to unbanked individuals.
Community values
For generations BPD has made a special commitment within the community, offering scholarships and promoting better education levels in the country. The institution places a huge effort on ecological sustainability in key reforestation projects such as Plan Sierra. This opens an ecological network of branches that runs on solar energy and helps to save over 80 percent of the utility bill. It also generates awareness about the use of the limited natural resources and the importance of a recycling and financial saving culture. In addition, the bank makes contributions to improve the health of new-borns and their mothers, as well as the elderly, and also supports on-going microcredit foundation focused on northern rural regions.
Besides this, the institution is well known for its support to art and culture programmes and its contribution to strengthen its Dominican values. That’s why BPD is synonymous with integrity, trust, and opportunity in the country. In accordance with this, the bank was chosen as the most admired company by the Dominican people, in a survey by Mercado magazine last January.
As a socially responsible company, BPD also works for small and medium businesses, trying to make an impulse of this important segment of companies that create such a huge value for employment and the entire economy, providing them with accurate financial services, on-going training and digital initiatives.
During May last year, after evaluating the results of the previous year, Feller-Rate improved BPD’s, S.A. rating to AA (dom) long term with a stable outlook and AA- to subordinated obligations. Furthermore, Fitch reaffirmed the rating for BPD at AA- and for both subordinated debt issues A+ (dom).
Last year, thanks to its preponderant role, the bank managed to post significant quantitative achievements. Among the most important were: a 6.27 percent increase in total assets, a 2.53 percent increase in the net loan portfolio, a 0.75 percent increase in overall market share, a 8.9 percent increase in private sector market share and a 16 percent increase in users of internet banking, amounting to more than 300,000 users.
These statistics highlight the vital role the bank has had in Dominica over the past year, but they are also symbolic of the positive impact it has had at the heart of the country for over 50 years. And as the economy continues to grow, so must its financial institutions such as BDP, as they will be important pillars in the country in the years to come.
