Banking in Latin America

This chapter offers a unique portrayal of the evolution of banking in Latin America. We contextualize our analysis by providing a detailed assessment of how financial policy has evolved across the region beginning with development models of the post-1945 period. Events of the 1980s and 1990s are a source of recent developments, which we succinctly summarize as the financial deepening and growth of a market-oriented and more competitive environment. Specific developments include the repeal of state involvement in banking, and bank privatization including wider penetration of domestic banking by foreign banks. We examine the effects of consolidation on banking activity before considering the special role development banks have come to play, especially following the global financial crisis. Throughout the chapter, we present data to inform our comparative analysis across regional banking sectors, and between Latin America and other economies.

BANKING SYSTEMS IN ROMANIA AND ICELAND: TWO DIFFERENT WORLDS BUT SIMILAR DEVELOPMENT

The novelty of this paper is the comparative analysis of the Romanian and Icelandic banking systems. The study results reveal that despite the fact that Romania and Iceland are two different worlds, there are several similarities between the banking systems of these countries. They include a late development of banking systems, foreigners contributing a great deal to the development of the banking systems in the early stage of evolution. After the Second World War until the 1990s specialized banks operated in both countries. The banking systems of both countries prior to the 1990s were dominated by politics. Liberalization of banking and capital occurred both in Romania and Iceland after 1990; the bank privatization process took place during a similar period (1999-2006, Romania; 1998-2002, Iceland). Before privatization, banks in both countries lacked experience in a new banking “arena”. The global financial crisis greatly affected the two banking systems. Despite similarities, the evolution of the two banking systems was also marked by differences, notably the ownership origin of banks after privatization (foreign dominance in Romania; domestic owners in Iceland) and different business models developed by banks in the pre-crisis period.