Business & Tech

LEDC Sells Community First to El Salvador-Based Community Bank

Connection came through Office of Community Partnership trip.

Community First, LEDC's banking operation, will be sold to ADEL de Morazán Crédito (AMC), the non-profit announced Friday. 

The bank, , offers banking services, as well as refers customers to LEDC's workshops on financial skills and foreclosure prevention.

Manny Hidalgo, executive director of LEDC, said they had been looking to sell the bank for about three months when the opportunity with AMC first came up.

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"It’s a volume business, the magic number is about 50 transactions a day," Hidalgo said, explaining that Community First's volume, launched during the heights of the recession, had not reached that level. "We realized we would have to recapitalize it at a higher level."

Licensed in the United States as AMC Corp., ADEL de Morazán Crédito, has 18 branches in El Salvador, especially the Department of Morazán, which is currently being considered as a sister city of Montgomery County by the Office of Community Partnerships. Wheaton's branch would be their first foray into North America.

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Bruce Adams and Karla Silvestre from OCP visited Morazán last year, where they met ADEL's president Alejandro Benitez and the President of ADEL’s subsidiary AMC, Wilson Salmeron, as well as the Governor of Morazán.

Benitez and Salmeron returned the trip to Montgomery in January, where they met with LEDC. The sale was finalized this week, with LEDC selling 90 percent of its assets to AMC. LEDC’s Regional Lending Director, Cesar Lopez, will represent LEDC on the Board of Directors of Internacional AMC.

ADEL specializes in microloans in El Salvador, and hopes to add that service to Community First. Banks catering to immigrants, like Community First, traditionally have served as a place for remittances, or payments back to a home country to support family

"This is probably the most respected microlender in El Salvador," Hidalgo said, adding that their experience in El Salvador will help, as the majority of Latinos in the D.C. area are from or have ties to the country. 

Guarantying microloans back to El Salvador and other Latin American countries is an important step to Hidalgo.

"It’s one thing to be sending remittances, it's quite another thing to help the family back home invest," he said, "By strengthening El Salvador, we can help stabilize the migration flow, but not in a punitive way. If you want to get control of immigration to the United States, you have to focus on Latin America."

"I think it kind of cool they picked Wheaton," Hidalgo said, " That’s a real sign how the people on El Salvador view Wheaton."

Hidalgo and other employees of LEDC will join County Executive Leggett's delegation to Morazán this summer.


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