Banco Hipotecario
 |
|
| Sociedad Anónima | |
| Traded as | :BHIP |
| Industry | Financial Services |
| Founded | 1886 |
| Headquarters | Buenos Aires, Argentina |
|
Key people
|
Eduardo Elsztain, (Chairman) |
| Products |
Retail Banking Mortgages Consumer Finance Credit cards |
| Revenue |
 US$ 330 million (2011) |
|
US$ 56 million (2011) |
|
| Total assets |
US$ 2.84 billion (2011) |
|
Number of employees
|
1,892 (2011) |
| Website | hipotecario.com.ar |
Banco Hipotecario (:BHIP) is a leading commercial bank in Argentina and the nation's premier mortgage lender.
The institution was chartered on September 24, 1886, as the Banco Hipotecario Nacional (National Mortgage Bank) by a bill (Law 1804) signed by President Julio Roca. The bank pioneered mortgage lending on extended, low-interest terms in Argentina, and thus contributed to consolidating a modern Argentine economy (a policy centerpiece of the Generation of '80, as Roca and his allies were known).
The bank continued to grow and, during the administration of President Hipólito Yrigoyen (1916–22), its share of the nation's mortgages doubled to 37%. The headquarters relocated in 1942 from its original, Baroque headquarters in the financial district (transferred to the Central Bank of Argentina) to a larger, Rationalist office building facing Plaza de Mayo. The bank again grew significantly during President Juan Perón's populist administration, boosting its loan portfolio from 100,000 mortgages in 1946 to 500,000 a decade later.
During the Perón years, the bank began advancing home ownership by promoting direct lending to builders, and by allowing an accelerated amortization of its loans, whereby borrowers' 4% mortgages were mitigated further by inflation, which averaged 26% from 1944 to 1974; as two-thirds of the institution's loans at the time were on a 15- or 20-year basis, this became an important subsidy for local borrowers, extending home ownership to a majority of households.
The bank's core business was adversely affected by policy changes during the dictatorship installed in 1976. Central Bank Circular 1050, enacted in April 1980 at the behest of conservative Economy Minister José Alfredo Martínez de Hoz, bankrupted thousands of homeowners by indexing mortgages to the value of the US dollar locally, which rose around fifteenfold by July 1982, when Central Bank President Domingo Cavallo rescinded the policy.
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Wikipedia