Bankinter exceeds 5,700 million euros in its International Companies Business

Bankinter's international companies business ended 2015 with a volume of activity valued at 5,781.2 million euros, compared to 3,380.3 million euros the previous year, representing a growth of 71%.

These figures include both resources and investment in export finance, as well as the traditional export trade activity: guarantees, documentary letters of credit for exports and imports, cash transactions and exchange risk insurance.

Broken down into activities, the figure for export finance at the close of the financial year was 2,699 million euros, compared to 1,797 million in 2014, an increase of 50.2%. In terms of resources, the year-on-year growth in relative terms was 44.1%: 895.4 million in 2015 compared to 621.3 million the previous year.

In traditional export trade, we can highlight the excellent evolution in export documentary letters of credit. Thanks to a consolidated relationship with our clients and with international banking, by the end of 2015 we had reached a figure of 278.5 million euros in confirmed export documentary letters of credit. This figure represents a landmark in the history of the bank and attests its commitment to the internationalisation of its clients, who need the assurance of being paid abroad and who entrust their more sensitive operations to Bankinter.

Similarly, the volume of international business operations mediated by Bankinter rose over the year to 48,000 million euros, which includes imports and exports, charges and payments and other international payment methods.

As far as priority sectors are concerned, we can highlight infrastructures, rail transport, renewable energies and automobiles; and in terms of the regions with the most activity, of particular note are the Middle East, Europe, the USA, Canada, Latin America and Africa.

Bankinter considers international business as an essential variable within its new banking strategy and one of the mainstays on which the growth of its business sector is based.

In that respect, in 2014 the bank underwent a profound reorganisation of its business division, to which the institution had decided to give a major boost by providing it with more resources and new teams of specialist staff. A consequence of that new boost is the creation of three areas of business: Origination, Structuring and Financial Institutions, with the aim of providing rapid and well-chosen responses to our clients' needs.

Bankinter has more than 90,000 companies among its clients, of which more than 30,000 are exporting companies that undertake international business or operations with the bank. This long-standing specialisation of Bankinter in the companies business market, as well as the bank's good ratios in terms of solvency and asset quality, its accredited reputation in the market and the notable growth in exports among Spanish companies during the crisis, has allowed to Bankinter to reach these growth figures in this business area. New prospects are opening up for 2016 with the bank's recent acquisition of Barclays' retail business in Portugal.