Grupo Financiero BISA S.A.

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What it is

Grupo Financiero BISA S.A. was founded in 2017 and its principal activity is directing, administering, controlling and representing the financial group, maintaining ownership of more than 51% in all member companies. In practice it is the legal roof over Bolivia’s most comprehensive financial empire: one bank, two insurers, a leasing company, a brokerage, and a fund manager, all working under a single regulated umbrella.

Banco BISA S.A., the group’s engine, is a Bolivian banking and financial services company headquartered in La Paz, and has become Bolivia’s third-largest bank by assets. The group also comprises BISA Seguros y Reaseguros S.A. (general insurance and reinsurance), La Vitalicia Seguros y Reaseguros de Vida S.A. (life insurance), BISA Leasing S.A., BISA Agencia de Bolsa S.A. (a brokerage house), and BISA Sociedad Administradora de Fondos de Inversión S.A. (fund administration).

Banco BISA describes itself as “one of the most important banks in the country” and “part of the principal financial conglomerate of Bolivia.” As of 2025, Banco BISA was the most profitable bank in Bolivia’s system, with USD 111 million in net profit, and the second-largest by assets at USD 4.5 billion.

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Who owns it

The ownership chain is layered and runs offshore. ICE Ingenieros S.A. controls 97.014% of Grupo Financiero BISA, and Junet Internacional S.A., a Panamanian company, controls 99.99% of ICE Ingenieros — making the ultimate beneficial owner of nearly all the capital a Panamanian-registered entity.

ICE Ingenieros was founded in Bolivia in 1968; between 1985 and 1988 its capital was revalued dramatically, and by 1988 the Peruvian co-founder had sold his stake to Junet Internacional S.A., the Panama company that today holds virtually all of it.

Minor individual shareholders include José Luis Aranguren Aguirre (1.215%), Tomás Nelson Barrios Santivañez (0.33%), and other executives with smaller stakes. The Cámara Nacional de Industrias of Bolivia holds 0.248%.

When BISA distributed Bs 392.1M (~$39.8M) in dividends in January 2026, roughly Bs 332.4M flowed through this chain toward structures controlled from Panama.

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Who runs it

Julio César León Prado serves as President of the Board of Directors (Presidente del Directorio) of Grupo Financiero BISA — he presented the 2024 Annual Report and Financial Statements to shareholders in that capacity. León Prado is a civil engineer born in Quillacollo, Cochabamba; he has served as board president for decades.

At the January 30, 2026 shareholders’ meeting, León Prado was confirmed again as board president — a position he has held since 1984 at what is today Banco BISA.

Not published: the names of the Chief Executive Officer (CEO/Gerente General) of Grupo Financiero BISA S.A. as the holding entity are not disclosed in the primary sources consulted — the BBV company card (GFB_CAR.pdf), ASFI’s tarjeta page (appweb.asfi.gob.bo), or the grupobisa.com investor-relations pages. Bolivia’s RNSF requires issuers to disclose board composition but does not mandate public executive-officer listings at holding level for non-bank entities; the full list appears in the audited memoria anual, which was approved for external audit (firm: Ruizmier Pelaez S.R.L.) by ASFI in 2024 but was not available as a parseable document in this research.

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The money, in plain words

GFB is a holding company: it earns money almost entirely from the dividends its subsidiaries pay up to it, not from lending or selling policies directly. In the holding’s own books, the full-year 2023 net profit was Bs 135.1M (~$13.7M), and in the first half of 2024 the holding reported Bs 55.6M (~$5.6M) in net profit.

The consolidated group picture — what the whole empire earns — is significantly larger.

Banco BISA, the dominant subsidiary, earned net profit of USD 63.2M in full-year 2024 and delivered a return on equity of 19.1% — meaning owners earned about 19 cents back for every boliviano of capital they had in the bank, a strong result by regional standards. At 31 December 2024, total customer deposits at Banco BISA stood at USD 2,989M, a slight 1.81% fall from 2023.

At the consolidated group level, mid-year 2024 total assets stood at Bs 32,654.3M (~$3.315B), with liabilities of Bs 30,011M and equity of Bs 1,770.9M. Consolidated profit for the first half of 2024 was Bs 127.2M (~$12.9M), nearly double the Bs 70.2M earned in the same period a year earlier.

The holding itself carries modest debt. The holding’s liabilities include Bs 90.9M in financial debt — bank loans taken to fund subsidiary share purchases — which exerts pressure on results because the group depends entirely on dividends received from its member companies to service that debt.

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What it is doing now

In November 2024, Banco BISA launched “CriptoBISA,” making it the first bank in Bolivia and one of the first in Latin America to offer crypto-linked banking services. That is a bold move in a country whose central bank suspended dollar provision to the banking system during 2024, forcing Bolivians to seek hard-currency alternatives.

In September 2024, Grupo Financiero BISA transferred 2,229 shares of BISA Sociedad de Titularización S.A. — equivalent to 99.91% of that entity’s capital — to Mateo Kuljis Cochamanidis, a transaction authorised by ASFI via Resolution ASFI/901/2024. This is a meaningful portfolio simplification, shedding the securitisation arm to a private buyer.

This is news, not investment advice.