W Holding Company

W Holding Company
	Consumer finance
Website	Archive of www.wbpr.com/

The Westernbank logo. Its trademark El Banco del Pueblo is Spanish for The People’s Bank.

The W Holding Company was a financial holding corporation located in Mayagüez, Puerto Rico. On April 30, 2010, Westernbank, its wholly owned bank subsidiary, failed and its deposits and assets were seized by the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation and subsequently sold to Banco Popular de Puerto Rico.^[1]

History

Westernbank was founded on March 1, 1958, under the name Western Federal Savings and Loan Association of Puerto Rico in the western town of Mayagüez by Miguel A. García Méndez, a local statesman, businessman and experienced banker. With initial deposits reaching $250,000, the bank grew at a rapid rate, quadrupling its deposits and assets in less than nine months. By the early 1960s, Westernbank had expanded to the western and southwestern region of the island, with bank branches in the towns of Aguadilla, San Germán and Cabo Rojo.

Between 1978 and 1981, when the

stock prices

.

Westernbank lending policies and practices focused mainly on

mortgage residential loans rather than commercial and construction loans because, although commercial and construction loans offer a much higher rate of return, mortgage loans offer a much smaller risk of default. However, in 1994, after a revision of state bank laws, the company decided to diversify its loan portfolio and services by changing its charter to become a full-service commercial bank. This allowed the bank to experience significant increases in customers, bank branches, loans (which now included commercial and construction loans), and ultimately revenue, doubling its financial size every two and a half years without the need of consolidations

or mergers during the 1990s.

W Holding Company

In 1999, Westernbank was reorganized to improve its services and to better represent its future plans and strategy. This reorganization created the parent company, W Holding, and converted its main divisions, such as Westernbank, into wholly owned subsidiaries. In July 2000, the company was officially converted into a financial holding company under the Bank Holding Company Act, which allowed it to engage in all financial related activities, including those with stricter regulatory standards than banking such as insurance and market securities.

In 2001, W Holding created Westernbank Insurance Corp., a general insurance agent. This move diversified the company's services while at the same time improving its investment portfolio, given that it could now place property, casualty, life and disability insurance while generating commission income. Most of the agency's volume derived from two areas: mortgage insurance on residential mortgage loans and credit life insurance for borrowers of personal loans, both of which were awarded by its sister company Westernbank.

In early 2002, W Holding acquired from Banco Popular de Puerto Rico a 23-story building previously known as the Hato Rey Tower or the

Golden Mile District

" (La Milla de Oro in Spanish). After renovations and improvements were made to its facilities, the building was renamed the "Westernbank World Plaza", and then hosted the company's San Juan metropolitan area headquarters, its Westernbank Business Credit and Expresso divisions’ main offices and several other non-related tenants.

Before the acquisition by Banco Popular

Its main headquarters were located at 19 West Candelaria Street in Mayagüez, Puerto Rico, the town of the company's founding. Its main subsidiary, Westernbank, at one time operated 55 bank branches, all insured by the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation. It had opened two bank branches in the Miramar and Old San Juan sections of the island's capital, which feature a new information system that allowed bank representatives to perform certain banking transactions with customers at informal places, such as the lobby area, the waiting area, and even in the customer waiting line for the teller counters.

Recognitions

Ranked 21st among the "Top 50 stocks of the 1990s" by
Return On Equity (ROE) by U.S. Banker
Magazine two years in a row (1997 and 1998).

Westernbank was the only bank in Puerto Rico since the industry's inception in the 1850s, and one of a few in the United States, who had been profitable every single year since its founding.
Rated "One of America’s Fastest Growing Companies" by Equities Magazine.
Ranked 1st as "Best in Technology" among all banks in the United States by Microbanker Publication.
Included in
NASDAQ
’s "1,000 Honor Roll" and "Top 100 Company Honor Roll".
Ranked 7th and 10th among the "100 Best Banks in the United States" by U.S. Banker Magazine in 2003 and 2002, respectively.
Ranked among the 20 best publicly held performing companies for the benefit of their stockholders and investors, also known as the "TOP GUN" companies, by the
Wall Street Journal (2004).^[2]
W Holding was the only financial company in such TOP GUNS listing.

As part of the TOP GUNS listing of The Wall Street Journal, the company was included in the strongest of all categories for having 10 years of consecutive and accumulated benefits of its stockholders (2004).^[2]
Ranked the 1,674th Largest Company in the World by Forbes (2005).

Stats

Over $16 billion in assets (2006).
Approx. 1,311 employees.
Consistently maintained one of the lowest delinquency ratios on its loan portfolios among all banks in Puerto Rico.
One of the fastest-growing commercial bank in Puerto Rico, increasing both total assets and loans at an average annual growth rate of over 26% for the last five fiscal years.