The bank will facilitate banking services to the Diaspora in Spain and the United States.
Banco de Reservas announced that it will open three representative offices in the United States and Spain, with the purpose of facilitating banking services to the Dominican diaspora, which totals some two million emigrants, not counting their descendants born abroad.
The internalization of the banking entity will begin with the opening of the Madrid office, projected for October of this year, and will continue during the first quarter of 2023 with the installation of two more, located in Miami and New York.
In the case of Spain, the representative office in Madrid is expected to be approved by the middle of this month and will begin offering service to the public in October, coinciding with the celebration of the 810th anniversary of the founding of Banreservas. Its inauguration will take place in January, within the framework of the International Tourism Fair, Fitur 2023, and will operate in the centrally located De la Castellana Avenue, in front of the Dominican Consulate in that city.
The two offices that will operate in the United States will open in the first quarter of 2023. The Miami office will operate on Brickell Avenue, in front of the Dominican Consulate. The New York office will operate in Washington Heights, Upper Manhattan, where most Dominicans live.
The representative offices will replicate all Banreservas services from the place where they operate, but the financial operations will be carried out in the Dominican Republic, which will make it possible to expedite and carry out banking procedures for Dominicans in their country, without having to travel to the Dominican Republic.
Samuel Pereyra, general administrator of the financial institution, specified that, although Banreservas will not be able to carry out financial intermediation operations abroad, such as receiving money in accounts, it will refer the procedures to its local offices in the Dominican Republic.
“This is the first time that a Dominican bank has appeared before the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve (Central Bank) of the United States to request its approval in the U.S. banking system,” Pereyra said.
“This is a milestone for Dominican banks that will result in a great benefit for Dominicans living abroad, who will no longer have to travel to the country to carry out a banking procedure, such as obtaining a loan to purchase a home in their native country,” said the banking executive.
Pereyra said that “with this initiative we will achieve the internationalization and positioning of Banreservas in other markets to be able to offer a portfolio of international solutions, taking advantage of the maturity and current capabilities of the Bank, to support the incorporation of new services outside our borders”.
In the first stage, Dominicans will be able to apply for mortgage loans to acquire homes and other properties in the Dominican Republic, open Remittance Accounts and financial instruments, as well as manage Insurance. In the latter cases, Banreservas will act as a second-tier bank for customer transactions with other subsidiaries of the Reservas Family, such as Inversiones y Reservas and Seguros Banreservas.
Financial authorities
In order to begin the process of opening representative offices abroad, Banreservas previously obtained the approval of the Superintendency of Banks and the Monetary Board of the Central Bank of the Dominican Republic in January 2022.
For this purpose, it met in Madrid with the authorities of the Central Bank of Spain and the FED in the United States.
The internationalization of Banreservas comes to satisfy a demand raised by the Dominican community residing outside the country and wishing to maintain investment links or send remittances to the country, as expressed in various scenarios by residents in Spain, as well as community, commercial and business leaders established in the United States, where 1.4 million Dominicans reside.
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