Rabobank Group

Banco Regional was founded by farmers and is mainly active in the agricultural sector in the southwestern part of Paraguay. Its primary focus is supporting and financing farming businesses and cooperatives in areas where other financial institutions are not yet active.

Strong personal relationships and knowledge of agriculture are hallmarks of Banco Regional’s customer-focused approach.

Rabobank acquired a 40 percent stake in Banco Regional in 2008. The following year, we helped it merge with the Paraguayan business of ABN AMRO to become Paraguay’s largest bank. With our assistance, Banco Regional is
combining its specialist areas of agriculture and small and medium-sized businesses, and strengthening operations there. In the longer term, it plans to expand into retail and wholesale banking.

A Rabo specialist has been deployed as Chief Operating Officer to Banco Regional to head up operations and IT for three years. His expertise is helping the Paraguayan bank mitigate operating risks such as an outdated core banking system and the concentration of data servers in a single location.

Spanish-speaking credit specialists from Rabobank are training Banco Regional staff. Sessions have so far focused on general credit risk and agricultural credit, and we plan specific training on the credit process and credit risks in the dairy and pig-breeding industries.

Paraguay’s food and agricultural sector is promising: cotton and soy are farmed in large quantities, and the country is a major beef producer. As well as helping Banco Regional grasp these opportunities even better, Rabo Development is assisting in formulating a strategy to become a full-service bank operating nationwide in all customer segments.

We are also advising on how to preserve the customer intimacy that is such a unique selling point of the Paraguayan bank. 

Website Banco Regional