Grupo Davivienda S.A.

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What it is

Davivienda is Colombia’s second-largest bank by assets, gross loans and deposits. It has more than 50 years of experience and operates in six countries, offering financial and non-financial services to millions of people.

At the end of 2024 it served close to 24.9 million customers, employed more than 17,000 people, and ran 658 branches and more than 2,800 ATMs. Its digital wallet DaviPlata closed 2024 with 18.5 million users — 4.5 million of whom hold DaviPlata as their sole financial product, making it a major force in financial inclusion.

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Who owns it

The founding family behind Davivienda is the Cortés family, which created the broader Grupo Bolívar financial conglomerate. Miguel Cortés has led Grupo Bolívar since 2011, succeeding his father.

Together, Grupo Bolívar–linked entities hold the dominant stake. According to the February 2024 shareholder register filed with the BVC, the six largest Bolívar-group vehicles — Inveranagrama, Inversiones Financieras Bolívar, Inversiones Cusezar, Inversiones Meggido, Grupo Bolívar S.A. itself, and Compañía de Seguros Bolívar — together held approximately 76% of total shares.

Since January 2025, Scotiabank also holds an approximate 20% ownership stake in Davivienda Group, the new holding company formed to absorb its operations.

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Who runs it

Javier Suárez assumed the presidency of Davivienda just before the financial sector entered its most recent difficult cycle. He steered the bank through that turbulence; before him, Efraín Forero had led the bank for 31 years before retiring at the end of 2021.

Suárez currently serves as President of Banco Davivienda S.A. The corporate-governance report (April 2025) names the chief financial and risk functions but a single named CFO is not disclosed in the investor-relations filings reviewed; the bank operates with several executive vice-presidents covering finance, risk, and international banking.

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The money, in plain words

The Colombia standalone entity earned a net profit of COP 853,000 million (US$247 million) in full-year 2024 — a sharp recovery after recording losses the prior year. The bank’s president noted that the cost of credit risk fell as the consumer loan portfolio improved, “which led us to earn profits in the third and fourth quarters of the year, indicating a clear recovery trend.”

The consolidated gross loan book — all countries combined — closed the year at COP 145.5 trillion (US$42.2 billion), up 7% year-on-year. The overall loan quality ratio improved to 4.41%, falling 52 basis points during the year, driven mainly by better consumer-loan performance.

Capital is solid: the core capital ratio (CET1) stood at 10.95% — nearly 4 percentage points above the regulatory floor — and the total solvency ratio closed at 15.57%.

In March 2024 Davivienda also raised COP 720,000 million (US$209 million) by issuing 36 million new shares, boosting its capital base. For context, the bank keeps roughly COP 4 (US$0.00)of net profit from every COP 100 (US$0.03)of interest income it collects — a net interest margin that was squeezed in 2022–2023 by high funding costs but is now recovering (our calculation, based on reported figures).

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What it is doing now

The biggest move in the bank’s history closed on 1 December 2025. Scotiabank and Davivienda completed the transfer of Scotiabank’s banking operations in Colombia, Costa Rica and Panama; the combined operations now sit under a new holding company, Davivienda Group.

The former Scotiabank branches in Colombia and Costa Rica are being rebranded as DAVIbank.

The alliance lifts the combined customer base above 29 million and pushes combined assets past US$60 billion — a near-40% jump in scale. Earlier in 2024, the bank also acquired ePayco, a Colombian digital-payments company, to deepen its merchant-services offer.

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What to watch

• Integration execution. Merging two very different bank cultures and IT systems across three countries is the critical test of the next 18–24 months; cost savings and revenue synergies will take time to show.
• Scotiabank’s 20% stake. Scotiabank has the right to appoint board members proportional to its ownership stake — a new governance dynamic for a family-controlled institution.
• Colombia’s fiscal risk. Capital ratios are healthy, but Colombia’s sovereign rating outlook was revised negative by both Moody’s and S&P in 2024, and a weaker peso directly erodes dollar-reported results.
• DaviPlata and digital competition. 91% of Davivienda’s clients are already digital; the threat is neobanks doing the same at a fraction of the cost.
• Loan quality. The improvement trend is real — down 52 basis points in 2024 — but at 4.41%, the quality indicator is still elevated and bears watching as economic growth remains sluggish.

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This is news, not investment advice.