Latin America's best bank transformation 2018: HSBC Mexico

This award goes to HSBC for its transformation of HSBC Mexico. As Euromoney has reported a number of times in recent years, the weak performance of the bank – coupled with the wider strategic retreat of the bank from some Latin American retail markets – had led to expectations that it would be sold.

Instead, the bank changed its management, its strategy and its fortunes. Juan Parma, head of retail banking and wealth management for Latin America, was relocated from São Paulo after being closely involved in the sale of that country’s business to Bradesco.

Parma says the key difference in making HSBC Mexico a viable business, as opposed to that in Brazil, was that the bank already had decent scale. But much needed to be done. 

He also says that, while the turnaround was crystallized in last year’s results, the key change came with the appointment of Nuno Matos as chief executive at the end of 2015.

The bank invested in leveraging its global network to bring in better products and services to Mexican customers – in many cases HSBC Mexico became either the test environment for new technologies or innovated locally in adoption.