In Braga, president of Caixa warned that the bank would “immediately have a foreign part” if it were privatized

The executive president of Caixa Geral de Depósitos (CGD), Paulo Macedo, stated today, in Braga, that the public bank, if privatized, would immediately be owned by a “foreign part”, due to a lack of sufficient capital in Portugal.

“There are those who say that Caixa should be privatized. The consequence of Caixa being privatized is that it immediately became a foreign part, because there is not enough capital in Portugal to invest 10 billion euros or whatever Caixa has in its own capital”, he said.

At the opening of another edition of Encontros Fora da Caixa, Paulo Macedo admitted that Portugal needs more foreign investment, because it has “an insufficiency of own capital”.

Paulo Macedo highlighted CGD’s “first place” in European stress tests, stressing that this is an “unthinkable” performance for a European bank.

“Caixa, fortunately, not only presented good results (…), but also managed to have the best place in terms of reputation and managed to have first place in terms of stress testing of European banks, which was something unthinkable here three years ago. years, or 10, or 15 or 20, put whatever period you want. No one has ever thought that a Portuguese bank would be in first place, while at the same time managing to increase its ratings. [notações]”, he stressed.

Caixa Geral de Depósitos had record profits of 1,291 million euros in 2023, 53% more than the 843 million euros obtained in 2022.

At a meeting on the theme “Artificial Intelligence: the engine for the next industrial revolution?”, the executive president of CGD said that AI “enables a 360º view of customers”, and could thus mean “relevant gains in the services provided by bank.”

“We have to make a virtuous combination between technology and talent”, he said, highlighting that he sees AI as “a matter of support in the company’s strategy”, which can help simplify processes and reduce costs and lead to “more informed decisions”.

CGD has a base of three million customers, around 20% of which are from the so-called “generation Z”, that is, born between the beginning of the 90s and 2001.

As stated on the public bank’s website, the so-called “digital natives” are at stake, who are “naturally skilled with technology, and even experience difficulties being offline”.

“Being a generation marked by the virtual and immediacy, they have different habits than previous ones. For example, they may prefer remote communications to face-to-face meetings and have some difficulty meeting pre-established schedules”, they say.

Therefore, Paulo Macedo says that Caixa must know how to use technology to serve customers and place them “at the center of its business”.