Founded in 1954, Bancaribe is a private, midsize Venezuelan bank listed on the Caracas Stock Exchange since 1998. Its shareholder structure comprises over 1,200 shareholders, including its founders, who remain the control group. It has some 860,000 customers, of which 95% are individuals, and the remaining 5% are businesses. A network of 97 branches covers almost all of the country’s states, with eight of them embodying an innovative digital office model that will keep spreading to different cities in the coming months. The bank’s workforce of over 1,000 has 62% of women working at all hierarchical levels.
Bancaribe’s brand has achieved an international footprint through Bancaribe Curacao Bank, N.V., and Bancaribe International Bank, Inc., incorporated in Puerto Rico.
Digital Bancaribe
Over the past four years, Bancaribe has focused on its digital transformation strategy, positioning it at the forefront of technological innovation in Venezuela’s banking industry and positively impacting its customer, employee, and shareholder experience. Bancaribe developed its strategy through projects based on artificial intelligence, mobility, and analytics, in addition to process optimization, and training initiatives. This strategy has resulted in digital branches, new and updated apps for customer service, an omnichannel website, and a shareholder portal, among many other innovations. By the end of 2022, Bancaribe had reached a Collaborator level of digital maturity based on the Forrester framework.
Responsible Bancaribe
Bancaribe has been a pioneering institution in adopting good governance practices and principles, in creating an independent office of the customer rights ombudsperson, and in ensuring strict regulatory compliance through a department reporting to the Chairperson, all of which confirm a genuine commitment to society since its inception.
Bancaribe structures its corporate responsibility around its stakeholders-customers, employees, shareholders, suppliers, authorities, and the community. The bank’s day-to-day activities reflect this engagement, as do the programs and initiatives it develops to generate value for Venezuelan society. Starting in 2013, the bank published a regular Corporate Responsibility report in addition to the semi-annual management report on this matter, based on the Guide for the Preparation of Sustainability Reports of the Global Reporting Initiative (GRI).
In 1999, Bancaribe founded the first microfinance bank in Venezuela, partnering with several Venezuelan NGOs, the Inter-American Development Bank, CAF (now the Development Bank of Latin America), Profund Investment Fund, and Accion International, seeking to achieve a high degree of financial inclusion by offering, during more than twenty years, products and services adapted to the needs of popular class entrepreneurs lacking access to traditional banking services. Beyond financing micro-business projects, the model included technical advice and support for their implementation.
In Bancaribe, we are convinced that by conducting the banking business responsibly, we contribute to sustainable development.