An Ecuadorean Bank Finds a Niche with Emigrants in Spain
厄瓜多銀行西班牙撈金
By Raphael Minder

MADRID – Rosalia Efigenia Guamán, one of 540,000 Ecuadorean emigrants living in Spain, jumped on the news that the biggest privately owned bank in Ecuador, Banco Pichincha, had also moved here.
蘿莎莉亞‧艾菲海尼亞‧瓜曼是旅居西班牙的54萬厄瓜多移民之一，聽到厄瓜多最大民營銀行皮欽查銀行已經進軍馬德里，樂得跳了起來。

Rekindling her relationship with the bank she had used back home allowed Ms. Guamán, a housekeeper and waitress, to lower the cost of her remittances, she said, as well as to buy a life insurance policy. “I feel very reassured to know that it will be much easier for my mother in Ecuador to get back everything possible if anything goes really wrong for me here,” she said.
擔任女管家兼女侍的瓜曼說，與在祖國來往的銀行再續前緣，讓她得以降低把錢匯回厄瓜多的成本，同時買份壽險。她說：「可以非常放心的是，如果我在這裡出了大事，遠在厄瓜多的母親盡可能取回我的東西會輕鬆許多。」

Pichincha received its Spanish commercial banking license in spring 2010, just as Greece became the first euro zone member to seek a bailout, setting off a debt crisis that has also left Spain and its banking sector reeling. Since then, the bank’s Spanish unit has grown beyond the expectations of its own management by pulling off a trick that companies the world over seek to perform: selling familiarity to a loyal, nearly captive clientele far from home.
皮欽查2010年春取得西班牙商業銀行執照。當時希臘成為第一個尋求紓困的歐元國並引爆債務危機，西班牙及其金融業也受重創。此後皮欽查的西班牙分行藉由各國企業亟思施展的手法，亦即把熟悉感賣給遠離祖國忠誠到跡近死忠的客群，業績好到甚至超乎行方預期。

Its timing also proved fortunate, as Spanish banks that had previously sought to attract Latin American migrants started to pull back from this line of business as the euro zone’s financial crisis put pressure on them to cut noncore activities.
皮欽查進軍西班牙也得乎天時。當時此前試圖吸引拉美移民的西班牙各銀行因歐元區金融危機被迫放棄非核心業務，紛紛撤出這個領域。

“The crisis has meant that our competition simply vacated the space that was our obvious target, in terms of clients,” said Jorge Ignacio Marchán Riera, who is the head of Pichincha’s operations in Spain.
皮欽查西班牙分行業務主管馬千說：「這場危機意味，我們的對手就這麼騰出了我們明顯鎖定的客層空間。」

Mr. Marchán said his bank would make a profit this year on its Spanish business, two years ahead of schedule. Assets under management in Spain are expected to double, after having reached 63 million euros ($84 million) at the end of 2011, up from 27 million euros a year earlier. And while most Spanish banks are downsizing their consumer networks, Mr. Marchán wants “at least” 20 branches across Spain by the end of the year, up from 12 at present.
馬千說，皮欽查西班牙分行今年將可獲利，比預期提早二年；該行2010年底的西班牙資產約2700萬歐元，2011年底達到6300萬歐元，預料今年可增加一倍。西班牙的銀行大多縮小消費者網絡之際，馬千希望皮欽查至年底在西班牙至少能有20家分行，比目前多出八家。

Still, it may be too early to call Pichincha more than a small and timely success story.
儘管如此，現在恐怕還不能說皮欽查銀行不只是及時成功的小小實例。

“Pichincha is doing well partly because it comes from zero and so doesn’t carry the heavy load of bad loans that banks here have accumulated,” said Javier Santomá, professor of financial management at IESE, a Spanish business school. “The real test for any bank, however, always comes, not when it lends, but when it eventually tries to get its money back.”
西班牙IESE商學院金融管理教授桑托馬說：「皮欽查銀行表現好，部分原因是它從零開始，沒有西班牙銀行多年累積的沉重壞帳包袱。不過一家銀行真正考驗的到來，從不是放款的時候，而是最後設法收回這些借出資金的時刻。」

Banking to migrants, however, looks promising. Migration worldwide is expected to continue rising, which in turn should benefit Pichincha and other institutions from developing countries that have expanded overseas to cater to migrants who send part of their earnings home.
話雖如此，針對移民的金融業務看似大有可為。全球各地的移民料將持續增加，從而對皮欽查之類開發中國家銀行有利，這些銀行為配合把部分收入匯回本國的移民而向海外擴張。

Last year, remittance flows to developing countries rose 8 percent, to $351 billion. They are likely to reach $441 billion by 2014, according to a report published in December by the World Bank.
世界銀行去年12月公布的報告指出，去年流向開發中國家的移民匯款比前一年增加8%，達3510億美元。估計至2014年可以達到4410億美元。

The World Bank noted that remittance outflows from Spain had remained “fairly resilient” and grew 15 percent in the first half of last year as “migrants have cut into savings and even consumption in order to send remittances, and perhaps to prepare for an eventual return.”
世銀指出，自西班牙流出的移民匯款「相當堅韌」，去年上半年並增加15%，因為「移民提取存款甚至減少消費，俾將更多錢匯回國，或許是為落葉歸根預做準備」。

Despite Spain’s struggling with a jobless rate of almost 23 percent, only a few thousand Ecuadoreans have returned home.
儘管西班牙失業率幾乎高達23%，卻只有幾千厄瓜多移民返回祖國。

Spain registered about five million Latin American migrants in a decade, now equal to 12 percent of its population. Ecuadoreans form the largest Latin American community in Spain, spearheading migration to the country after a devastating economic crisis in 1999 that led to a 70 percent depreciation of Ecuador’s currency, the sucre, and a default on its external debt. The crisis occurred just as Spain’s construction-led boom was getting under way.
過去10年來，在西班牙登記有案的拉美移民累計大約500萬人，相當於總人口的12%。西班牙的拉美移民以厄瓜多人最多。他們在1999年的經濟危機導致厄瓜多貨幣蘇克瑞重貶70%及外債違約之後，率先前往西班牙。這場危機出現時，西班牙以建築業為火車頭的經濟榮景方興未艾。

Pichincha has managed to pick up clients by not charging for remittances to Ecuador or to other countries, like Peru and Colombia, where Pichincha operates.
皮欽查銀行吸引客戶的方法是，匯款至厄瓜多或秘魯、哥倫比亞等皮欽查設有分行的國家，不收手續費。

“I come from a country that has itself been in crisis for as long as I’ve lived,” Mr. Marchán said, “so what is happening now in Spain certainly doesn’t feel like something that we wouldn’t know how to cope with.”
馬千說：「我來自厄瓜多，而我這一生厄瓜多一直都在危機之中。所以，西班牙當前的處境對我們而言，當然不會是不知如何因應的情況。」

原文參照：
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/02/25/business/global/ecuadorean-bank-finds-a-niche-with-emigrants-in-spain.html

2012-03-13聯合報/G5版/UNITEDDAILYNEWS 陳世欽譯原文參見紐時週報八版下