After almost three decades of path in Cecabank, Ainhoa Jáuregui assumed in April the charge of chief executive officer of the company with “illusion and accountability”. Throughout those years, the bank has consolidated its leading position in Spain, with more than 273,000 million euros in low assets depositary at the close of August of 2025. A business in which size and escalabilidad are key. That is why they study grow for the via inorganic. “We have three operations on the table that we are analysing. Continuously examine what opportunities of purchase on the market would be able to give us boost to achieve a great rate of growth or a great volume in the business base (the depositary, the custody and the wholesale services)”, permits.
Ensures that the bank has muscle to do it. “We have a capital ratio that we allow investing without altering our risk profile and we are going to make good use of it”, moves forward. That base both so much and exploration of new opportunities as the consolidation of alliances in key fields. Especially, in that one of technology and payments, in which the collaboration with other actors is shaped as an engine of the innovation.
A strategic plan continuista with the business bases on the centre
Low its address, Cecabank initiates a new era that is articulated around the strategic plan 2025-2027, that it does not expect break with it already built. “We believe that we have a model of business settled, recognised and with potential. It is not a plan disruptivo, but instead continuista”, sums up. The executive emphasises the value of its base business as a “lung of the income statement ”.
Although the market tends to set in the new initiatives, Jáuregui remembers that “without the strength of the main business would not be possible to maintain the growth”. The road map includes dynamise several openwork projects already up and running. In the first place, the opening of the branch in Luxembourg reified in 2025. This looks for so much “accompany to our clients as position us in a niche of market in which the major players international do not offer the flexibility which arrange companies with a more unpretentious”size, remarks.
In the second place, the starting up of the service of custody of criptoactivos after the acquisition of the licence by the CNMV. This has set up one of the landmarks more recent and differentials of Cecabank, when having become one of the three banks Spanish in receiving that authorisation, moving forward to the market. And third party, to have added as a direct member of the Chamber of European Derivatives and of the PortugueseCSD, which them will allow accompanying with new protests to its clients with a strong presence in the country.
Meanwhile, the company also moves forward in fee-paying means (with projects of adquirencia and international ATMs in Portugal, Italy and Greece) and in treasury, with the creation of an agency of securities finance while awaiting that the standard is approved on securities lending in Spain.
Technology: fundamental axis of the future of the banking
For Ainhoa Jáuregui, the innovation is one of the fundamental axes of the future of the banking. “In Spain have degree of digitisation very relevant, but the market demand increasingly speed. The immediacy is the major challenge for the future ”, explains. That demand is translated in interconnected immediate payments, digital contracting of products and settlements in increasingly short terms. The major challenge, insists, “is combine the agility that demands the market with the security that constitutes the essence of the banking”confidence.
This immediacy has a lot that see in the shortening of the cycle of settlement of T+2 to T+1 that prepares Europe for October 2027. “The management of the liquidity is moved of an approach of end during the day to a control intraday, in multiple currencies and with risks of exchange rate and secondary that they demand a fast”reaction, insists.
The reply of Cecabank involves combine “security, agility and resilience. Do it without technology and without people, is impossible”, the CEO sums up of the company. That is the equation that guide the transformation of a bank that looks for expand its international outreach with a differential model: independent and without business retail nor asset management.
That vision compels also to rethink the investment in digital new capacities. Cecabank does not look for be present in all innovations of direct way, but instead equilibrate investment and alliances with strategic technological members. “In the world of the technology can not be present in all the emerging innovations and carry out a significant investment in each of them. Some times see clear the investment, and others, the alliance. Everything the sector will have bet for that mixed strategy ”, states Jáuregui. In its opinion, the automation, boosted by the artificial intelligence, will be another essential step, since it will allow speeding up turnaround times without losing precision nor efficiency.
Regulation: always an opportunity
Another of the catalysts in the evolution of Cecabank is the regulation, conceived not as an obstacle but instead “as one of the pillars of our business”. Within the framework of the new strategic plan, Cecabank has made good use to add to Elisa Ricón as a director of Regulation, until now Inverco's Managing Director. “We are current since a standard starts to debate until its coming into force. Be in everything the process of follow-up we allow pondering on how is had specify the measure and position us in an advantageous situation to move it to the services that offer to the clients”, explains. A clear example has been DORA, the Regulations of Resilience Digital Operations, for that which had already been gone preparing in an early way. “The regulation for us is always an opportunity”, underlines.
Interview for Arantxa Rubio.
