Context: How Bolsa de Valores de El Salvador works, and what it makes issuers disclose · El Salvador on the LatAm Power Map
El Salvador’s smallest full-licence bank was born from the wreckage of a Mexican retail lender and rebuilt into something entirely different: a Salvadoran microfinance institution that lends mostly to women-owned micro-businesses who never had a bank account before.
| Key Facts — Banco Abank, S.A. | |
|---|---|
| Full name | Banco Abank, Sociedad Anónima |
| Ticker / exchange | BABANK.SV — Bolsa de Valores de El Salvador (debt securities issuer) |
| Headquarters | Antiguo Cuscatlán, La Libertad, El Salvador |
| Sector | Banking — microfinance & SME lending |
| Employees | 501–1,000 (2024) |
| Market value (market cap) | Not applicable — listed as debt issuer only; no public equity price |
| Yearly revenues (net interest + fees, 2024) | $23.5 million |
| Net profit (FY 2024) | $3.0 million |
| Net margin | 12.9% (our calculation: $3.03M ÷ $23.45M) |
| Return on equity (ROE) | 8.8% (our calculation: net profit ÷ average equity of ~$34.4M) |
| Total assets (end-2024) | $204.9 million |
| Price-to-earnings ratio | Not applicable — no traded equity |
| Dividend yield | Not applicable — no traded equity; $1.0M dividend paid in 2024 |
| Credit rating | BBB+ national scale (Pacific Credit Rating, El Salvador) |
| Website | www.abank.com.sv |
What it is
Banco ABANK is one of ten private banks in El Salvador’s national banking association, built around microfinance and lending to small and medium enterprises. It was launched in 2019 to serve the large informal economy — more than half of the country’s working population — that had little or no access to formal banking.
The bank’s purpose is financial intermediation: collecting deposits from the public and placing them as loans. It was formerly known as Banco Azteca El Salvador, S.A., a subsidiary of Mexico’s Banco Azteca, before its change of control and rebrand.
It is regulated as an authorised deposit-taking bank and is supervised by El Salvador’s Superintendencia del Sistema Financiero.
Who owns it
Perinversiones, S.A. de C.V. — the holding company of Grupo Perinversiones, which spans food and beverage, automotive, retail, real estate, and financial services — owns 99.99% of the bank.
Perinversiones belongs to Grupo Salume; it acquired the bank from Mexico’s Banco Azteca, which had held a 91% stake, and relaunched it as ABANK.
The ultimate beneficial owners of Perinversiones are Adolfo Miguel Salume Barake and Francisco Orantes Flamenco. There is no meaningful public float; the stock exchange listing covers only the bank’s debt securities, not its shares.
Who runs it
The Board of Directors is chaired by Francisco Orantes Flamenco (Director Presidente), with Adolfo Miguel Salume Barake as Vice-President and Eric Wilfredo Larreynaga Cruz as Secretary. The name of the executive managing director (Gerente General) is not disclosed in available public sources; day-to-day operations are led by a senior management team whose members appear in internal board minutes but are not listed on the company’s public-facing governance page.
The money, in plain words
The bank collected $42.8 million in interest on its loans and investments in 2024, then paid $9.1 million of that out to depositors — leaving $33.8 million of net interest income, a solid spread for a micro-lender. After writing off $23.3 million of bad loans — the single biggest cost, reflecting the high-risk nature of lending to first-time borrowers — total net revenues came to $23.5 million.
Running costs (salaries, premises, IT) consumed $20.4 million, leaving a pre-tax profit of $3.0 million and a net profit of the same $3.0 million after a small tax credit. The bank measures loan quality by the share of its portfolio graded C, D, or E — what regulators call “heavy portfolio” — which stood at 7.6% for consumer loans at mid-2023, down from 8.1% a year earlier.
That ratio is the number to watch: high write-offs are the price of financial inclusion, and the trend matters more than any single year.
The bank is domiciled in Antiguo Cuscatlán, La Libertad, and had 21 branches across El Salvador at end-2024, unchanged from the prior year. Total assets grew 14.1% in 2024 to $204.9 million, funded mainly by customer deposits of $139.6 million (our calculation).
What it is doing now
The bank’s social scorecard shows that more than 70% of its loan book goes to women micro-entrepreneurs; 15% of clients are entirely new to the formal financial system; and 67% of loans go to micro-business owners, with 30% placed in rural or semi-rural areas.
Dutch development lender Oikocredit extended a $5 million credit line to ABANK to support the micro-enterprise and lower-income segments of the Salvadoran economy. Separately, the bank issued $9.1 million in new own-label bonds on the Bolsa de Valores in 2024 — a sign it is diversifying its funding base beyond retail deposits.
What to watch
- Credit losses vs. growth: The $23.3 million written off in 2024 against a $33.8 million net interest margin leaves very thin headroom. Any deterioration in borrower quality hits the bottom line fast.
- Capital adequacy: Equity of $35.4 million supports $204.9 million of assets — a leverage ratio (assets ÷ equity of 5.8×) that is comfortable but leaves limited room for rapid loan-book expansion without a fresh capital injection.
- Funding mix: Historically ABANK has concentrated its funding in time deposits; within its diversification strategy it has turned to bank borrowing and capital-market instruments, including securitisation and commercial paper.
- Grupo Perinversiones’ wider ambitions: The group spans six business divisions including food and beverage, automotive and real estate — meaning the bank is one piece of a larger Salvadoran conglomerate, and group-level decisions can shape its strategic direction.
Sources
- Banco Abank, S.A. — Audited Financial Statements, year ended 31 December 2024 (primary source, fetched directly): abank.com.sv — Estados Financieros Diciembre 2024
- Bolsa de Valores de El Salvador — Issuer Directory, Banco Abank, S.A. (Board composition, credit rating): bolsadevalores.com.sv — Banco Abank Emisor ficha
- Banco Abank — Gobierno Corporativo page (financial statements archive, annual reports, credit-rating reports): abank.com.sv/gobierno-corporativo
- Pacific Credit Rating (PCR) — Risk Classification Report, Banco Abank, S.A., Comité 201/2023 (ownership structure, loan-quality indicators): abank.com.sv — PCR Informe junio 2023
- Bolsa de Valores de El Salvador — SCRiesgo rating report on Banco Abank, 2022: bolsadevalores.com.sv — INF-60552022-ABANK
- Dinero HN — “Grupo Perinversiones abre banco en El Salvador con el nombre de ABANK” (founding context, Grupo Salume connection, 2019): dinero.hn
- El Salvador.com — “ABANK celebra 5 años creciendo junto a los salvadoreños” (September 2024): elsalvador.com
- Banco Abank, S.A. — Audited Financial Statements, year ended 31 December 2022 (employee count, branch count, historical context): abank.com.sv — Estados Financieros Diciembre 2022
- Market data: EODHD (no financials available for this issuer; all financial figures sourced from primary documents above).
This is news, not investment advice.
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