Organisation profile

The Banco Popular y de Desarrollo Comunal was founded on July 15 of 1969, following significant political negotiations; it was meant to become an entity assigned to offer economic protection and welfare to the workers of the country, through the promotion of savings, satisfying their credit needs and financing projects of the community development organizations. The main strategic commitment defined by the bank is to offer access to the financial services to the populations excluded from conventional banks and guarantee financial sustainability in each one of the figures that make it up, through the implementation of strategies oriented towards offering financial and non-financial attention to those.
BPDC values integrity, excellence, service social responsibility, leadership, consistency, loyalty, solidarity and prudence in all its actions, and is strongly committed to providing its customers with a satisfactory service in every way. It is aiming to be the best of its kind in supporting the economic and social development of the all the segments of the country’s population, whether employed or not, and taking into consideration the social, economic and environmental aspects of their welfare.
The Banco Popular y de Desarrollo Comunal is a Costa Rican bank that operates under non-governmental public law. As of 1986, representation of the workers is assured as 290 delegates come together in the General Meeting of Workers, whose aim is to democratize the banks’ structures and ensure broad participation in orienting its policies. Consequently, the bank can be considered property of all the workers of the country: it owns 100% of the shares of the Popular Valores Puesto de Bolsa (Stock Exchange Seat), Popular Sociedad Fondos de Inversión (Investment Funds), Popular Pensiones Operadora de Planes de Pensiones Complementarias (Complementary Pension Plans), and Popular Sociedad Agencia de Seguros (Insurance Agency) of Costa Rica.
Together, all these and the bank make up the financial conglomerate that is the BPDC, which is structured into 3 units (for private individuals, companies, and for business development specialized in micro, small and medium enterprice). The whole means to offer benefit-generating products and services, assigning resources supporting the creation of programs with a social character, oriented towards improving the workers’life conditions and promoting the development of Costa Rican society in general.
Additionally, 20% of the annual benefits of Banco Popular y de Desarrollo Comunal are fed into its “special funds” capital; these are used to offer financial solutions to the informal productive sector, through a Risk Capital Fund (Focari-Spanish acronym), to help those who lack an initial depost acquire a house through the Special Housing Fund (FEVI-Spanish acronym) and to take care of the personal expenses and guarantee needs for the micro, small and medium sized businesses (mipymes-Spanish acronym).