Awards for Excellence country winners: Bolivia

The Bolivian financial system has been facing dollar scarcity for more than a year now and the impact on the economy has been predictably negative, with Fitch recently downgrading the country to CCC from B-. It has been a long running crisis, with the strongest and best bank in the system Banco Mercantil Santa Cruz (BMSC), playing an important role in providing much-needed liquidity. One of the peaks of the liquidity crunch came in March 2023 and BMSC played a systemically important role by meeting dollar demand when it had evaporated from many other banks.

Crises always lead to a flight to quality and 2023 was no exception in Bolivia. BMSC saw further concentration of the market into its own hands, with both organic and inorganic growth. In May 2023 the bank was granted approval from the country’s central bank to buy part of Banco Fassil’s credit and deposit portfolios, helping it to maintain its lead over the other private banks in terms of the scale of these assets and liabilities, with a market share of 14.4%