QCOSTARICA — Friday afternoon, June 28, the findings of the intervention team of the Coopeservidores (now known as CS Ahorro y Crédito) were announced. Although it had already been announced that the savings and loans had to be closed due to its unviability, the numbers that justified this decision were not known in detail.
The findings were published in full in the official government newsletter, La Gaceta.
The intervention team found that the deficit of Coopeservidores as of May 2024 reached ¢69.03 billion colones, the difference of the assets (¢584.9 billion colones) and liabilities (in excess of ¢653.9 billion colones).
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According to the report, assets include the loan portfolio that can be collected, accounts and commissions receivable, properties, furniture, and goods held for sale, among others.
In the liabilities column are, for example, debts with the public (people’s savings), accounts with the Banco Central de Costa Rica (BCCR) – Central Bank and other entities and capital contributions.
That is, the savings and loans had assets less than obligations, confirming that controller Marco Hernández had already said publicly about the financial situation of the intervened financial entity.
What would it take to keep Coopeservidores alive? The intervening team explains in its resolution that for the savings and loans to continue operating, it would not only be necessary for the members to inject the shortfall of ¢69 billion, even if the equity had reached zero. But this would not be enough to maintain its operation.
It would be necessary for associates to put in more capital to bring their equity adequacy to the regulatory minimum of 10%. This would require a second capitalization of ¢57 billion colones, bringing the capitalization required to ¢126.3 billion.
Dividing that number equally among Coopeservidores’ 131,311 associates, each would have to make a capital contribution of ¢963,000 colones.
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The intervention team concluded that this charge was not possible for five reasons:
- The vast majority of associates are individuals (75%) who earn an average gross salary of ¢700,000. This implies that if they had to make the indicated contribution, it would represent a major financial strain on their finances.
- 5,041 associates are debtors in a high risk category for non-payment. If they can’t pay the debt, they probably won’t be able to make this contribution either.
- There is no way to force all associates to make a capital contribution.
- The cooperative’s regulations say that capital contributions, if made, must be gradual so as not to affect the associates. This means that collection would take months or years, which is not viable at this time.
- The varied composition of the associates would prevent them from doing an internal recapitalization with their deposits, so this option was also ruled out.
Because of this, the decision was made to divide Coopeservidores into a “good bank” and a “bad bank”, the former will be put for sale, while the latter will be put into a trust to be managed to improve its profile and sell it within a year.
If this plan does not come to fruition, Coopeservidores would then be placed in a bankruptcy process.
The only financial entity to make a formal proposal by the Thursday, June 27, deadline to purchase the “good bank” was the Banco Popular y de Desarrollo Comunal (BP).
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The Banco Popular is a non-state public institution (Derecho Público), with legal status and its own assets, with full administrative and functional autonomy.
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