Tamarindo Spoils Customers with Bank Offer
The Beach Times

Banking, once the bane of every Tamarindo resident and tourist alike, is about to spoil them with choice.

Four banks are currently fighting for locations in Tamarindo, and the competition is heating up for offices in completed shopping centers.

BAC San José, Banco de Costa Rica and Banco Cuscatlán will all be moving into Tamarindo to rival for a share of the financial services market, including account management, loans and commission-based transactions.

Until now, Tamarindo and area residents have had to make do with a single branch of the Banco Nacional to service all of their financial transactions, as well as those of the thousands of tourists the town draws in, often daily.

In January, Banco de Costa Rica announced they would be opening a new branch in Tamarindo in response to the 'exponential growth' in the volume of business the town was generating, and following the success of their Flamingo branch.

This week Edelberto Leal, Regional Chief for the Banco de Costa Rica (BCR), confirmed the Tamarindo branch would open in August.

"We have the personnel but we want to do some further training," he says. "They are qualified and bi-lingual and are mostly from Santa Cruz. We also have a girl from Nicoya."

Mr Leal also confirmed BCR had found a location, but not the one it had wanted.

BAC San José, the second largest private bank in Costa Rica and a subsidiary of BAC International Bank, apparently beat them to the punch, recently unveiling a branch in the newly-built Plaza Conchal in Tamarindo, much to the chagrin of Mr Leal.

"I had been negotiating that space for a long time and it is the one we wanted," he said. "Being a State bank we have to go through a process, but private banks can make this decision quicker."

He confirmed that BCR will occupy another, larger space towards the back of the shopping plaza.

BAC San José currently has 31 branches in Costa Rica. The Tamarindo branch will be its second in Guanacaste, after Liberia.

The privately-owned Banco Cuscatlán has also confirmed that they will be opening a new branch in Tamarindo, but would not reveal the location, nor a scheduled opening date.

Regardless, the news of four banks where there used to be one, is likely to come as good news for much of Tamarindo�s population.

In the past, even simple transactions such as cashing a check could take up to an hour, with only three tellers to process the volume of customers filing into the branch. Since Internet banking in Costa Rica is not yet equipped to allow transfers between different banks, businesses were often forced to open a second bank account, with the second branch up to 30 minutes away.

"We will have to wait and see," says Jorge Contreras of Client Services for Banco Nacional in Tamarindo, in response to questions of the fresh competition. " I am sure some people will go and experiment in other banks."

Banco Nacional, which since its arrival into Tamarindo in 1999 has had a monopoly on the banking services in the area, is examining ways of maintaining its share of business in the face of new competition, including reinstating their loans service, which had ceased eight months ago.

"We have re-introduced loans for small businesses, for housing," confirmed Mr Contreras. "This includes foreigners if they have residency, and can demonstrate they are living here."

"Banco Nacional continues with the idea of expanding its services," he added. "There was the possibility that we would move to a bigger space, but the negotiations fell through. For the time being we are staying where we are."