The Bank

Creating a bank and succeeding in the attempt is no easy thing to do. The endeavor requires not just money but, most of all, perseverance, honesty and responsibility. But there is an additional ingredient without which the task becomes impossible: Clear rules and a State that remains independent from economic power.

At the beginning of the nineties, Peru lived through a deep economic and political crisis.

President Alan Garcia’s first term in office from 1985 to 1990 had been, to put it in a nutshell, a disaster. When Alberto Fujimori was inaugurated on July 28th, 1990, he found a country in shambles, penniless, regarded as a pariah by the international community and shaken by the Shining Path, a bloody terrorist movement, that was almost on the verge of taking over the national capital.

Peru’s political crisis at the beginning of the nineties was peculiar. On the one hand, political parties traditionally represented in Parliament had been sidelined after President Fujimori’s self-coup of April 5th, 1992. On the other, the country’s economy was crumbling.

Under such circumstances, investing in a bank amounted to taking a huge risk that may compromise even one’s own physical integrity. Despite such state of affairs, my father, with his children’s backing, decided to further bet on Peru.

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