Merger of CAME and We Believe took four years to materialize

The Popular Financial Societies (Sofipos), the Microentrepreneur Assistance Council (CAME) and We Believe announced their merger to operate as a single entity, which will have assets of 7,053 million pesos, the operation took four years to materialize, with it seeks to create one of the most robust entities in the popular sector.

Both institutions are subsidiaries of the Sociedad Anónima Promotora de Inversión (SAPI) TeCree Holding, with its merger, CAME plans to reach 10 million clients. In interview with The EconomistPablo Varela, general director of CAME, commented that this strategy was developed prior to the start of the pandemic, although due to complications it could not materialize.

“Four years ago we began to define ourselves as a group, since the integration of Tecremos, in the first year we focused on achieving certain synergies between the two sofipos, although they continued to operate independently, we are resuming practically what we ultimately wanted to do prior to the pandemic, which is to consolidate the entire operation into a single entity,” he commented.

In addition, Varela pointed out that both sofipos have a distinction in terms of the sub-segment they serve, however, he indicated that there will be no major changes for the user.

“We will continue with the way in which we have been working with Techreo since CAME, which gives us an even bigger platform to reach more clients”, explained the manager.

Scenario Sofipo

With the merger, CAME will serve more than 500,000 clients, in more than 400 branches, and will also represent 19% of the assets of the sofipo sector, according to data released in the statement, for which it will become the second most popular financial institution largest, after Libertad Servicios Financieros, whose participation amounts to 30.6% of the assets of the segment of this type of entity, according to official information.

“It is a decision that will also benefit the sofipo sector, since there will clearly be an extremely solid, robust company, with very good capitalization rates, whose operation will be clearly focused on the popular sector, this will make both our credit clients and our savings customers have the full certainty that we are an entity fully regulated by all the supervisors that exist”, explained Varela.

In addition, the manager indicated that in the process he worked hand in hand with the National Banking and Securities Commission (CNBV), to guarantee that the merger complied with regulatory requirements.

“We have done this in clear communication with the regulator, from the moment we proceeded with the actions that we had planned, we have discussed it with the commission and we have done it hand in hand with a communication and obviously they are playing their role of regulator,” he added.