New bank opens in Belize City

After over two decades of operating with four commercial banks,
Belize today welcomed number five. Alliance Bank, part of the growing
Glenn Godfrey business group, is housed temporarily in the New Road
headquarters of the St. James Building Society, but will soon move to
premises on Barrack Road. News Five’s Stewart Krohn spoke to Alliance’s
Manager Leo Vasquez, who says that his bank will offer customers a
better deal.

Leo Vasquez, Manager, Alliance Bank

?One of the things we intent to do, is to shrink the margins, we
want to offer higher deposit rates and lower lending rates. We are going
to operate in a much narrower margin, we are going to keep our overheads
down and figure we can make it that way.?

Stewart Krohn

?Your initial advertising boasts that the bank is Belizean owned and
for Belizeans. Who are the Belizeans, that own the bank??

Leo Vasquez

?The Belizeans would be people like Glenn Godfrey, Eugene Zabaneh
and Rick Escalante, Jerry McDermott, those are the major players.?

Stewart Krohn

?One of the common owners of the three financial institutions,
Provident Bank, Alliance Bank and St. James Building Society is Glenn
Godfrey. Is there any concern among regulators that the three
institutions might be too close together and not operate independently??

Leo Vasquez

?One of the stipulations in the Central Bank?s licence is that we
have to operate at arms length and we should be transparent. All our
transactions should be at arms length and transparent.?

Vasquez says that Alliance would also like to offer merchant
banking services and hopes to secure Central Bank permission to do so in
the future.