Best bank: Banco Cuscatlán
Banco Cuscatlán invested heavily in digitalisation of retail banking relationships in 2025, aiming to improve the end-to-end retail customer journey. These investments enabled faster account opening and more agile loan origination through streamlined digital flows and improved identity validation.
The bank also built a more coherent omnichannel service model, integrating digital banking, contact centre support and branch advisory into a smoother customer journey. Customers can thus initiate transactions digitally while still having access to personalised support where needed.
In parallel, Banco Cuscatlán improved payments and card servicing by introducing more intuitive digital tools for monitoring, account management and enquiries, which increased transparency and trust while reducing operational friction and service costs. These customer experience investments were directly linked to stronger customer acquisition, with retail banking customers rising 103,000 to 962,900 in 2025.
The bank’s retail offer is also more credible because it is effectively segmented. It continued to develop consumer and housing loan solutions tailored to different income segments in 2025. This was complemented by a broader effort to strengthen accessible savings and credit solutions through digital channels.
Segmentation extends upward as well, with a tailored solution for affluent and high net-worth offering tailored asset allocation alternatives, structured deposit products and customised credit facilities. This allows the bank to leverage a common product ecosystem while still delivering differentiated service levels to customers with more complex needs.
In 2025, the bank expanded its credit offering for SMEs and corporates through structured financing, working capital solutions and sector-tailored lending, while also improving cash management, payroll solutions and digital transactional capabilities to support business liquidity management. This contributed to the increase in SME and corporate deposits from $303.4 million to $351.9 million and to growth in loans to $150.8 million.
The bank also streamlined credit evaluation and approval workflows, improving turnaround times and responsiveness for business clients, and strengthened relationship coverage by equipping teams with analytical tools and sector-specific advisory capabilities.
Best bank for SMEs: Banco Cuscatlán
Banco Cuscatlán’s SME proposition is built around practical support for business growth rather than a narrow lending-only model. In 2025 the bank strengthened its SME and corporate platform through a combination of expanded credit offering, improved transactional services and more specialised relationship management, positioning itself as a strategic financial partner for businesses in El Salvador.
The product emphasis included structured financing, working capital solutions and sector-tailored lending, as the bank responded to the specific financing needs of different business models.
In 2025, corporate and SME loans increased from $137.4 million to $150.8 million, with growth translating into deeper commercial value in the form of increased revenues. The bank improved its cash management services, payroll solutions and digital transactional capabilities during the review period, which allowed businesses to manage liquidity more efficiently and helped deepen primary banking relationships.
Banco Cuscatlán made meaningful progress in reducing friction for SMEs at the point of onboarding and product access. The bank invested in digital onboarding optimisation, with the aim of enabling faster account opening and more agile loan origination through streamlined digital flows and improved identity validation. The effect was to reduce processing times and ease documentation burdens while maintaining compliance standards. The bank also built a more seamless omnichannel service model, integrating digital banking, contact centre support and branch channels into a more coherent customer journey.
SME clients can now move more easily between channels depending on the complexity of their needs, while helping the bank improve operational efficiency and customer acquisition.
Best bank for large corporates: Citi
Citi’s support for corporate clients in the El Salvadorian market is a key driver of economic growth in the market. Focusing on large local conglomerates, multinational subsidiaries, financial institutions and public-sector clients, Citi integrates lending, markets and transaction banking into end-to-end treasury, liquidity and risk management solutions.
The bank is branchless, cashless and paperless in El Salvador, having pivoted to a digital-first model based around CitiDirect and CitiConnect as the core enabling platforms. These platforms allow the bank to offer corporate clients digital treasury and ERP systems through real-time reporting, automated reconciliation, higher STP rates, and stronger security and fraud prevention controls.
Moreover, more than 90% of onboarding products and services are online, supported by digital document collection, e-signature and parallel processing of account opening and channel setup. This reduces time-to-transact and improves the client experience from the outset.
A key success story in 2025 was Citi’s relationship with Dollarcity. The firm is one of the Latam region’s fastest expanding retail groups, with operations across El Salvador, Guatemala, Peru, Colombia and Mexico, and in the review period it needed a banking partner that could combine cross-border liquidity management, digital treasury infrastructure and episodic expansion financing. Citi responded by implementing CitiDirect across all operating markets, giving Dollarcity unified treasury visibility and activating CitiConnect APIs for real-time reconciliation of retail flows.
The bank also centralised collections and vendor payments through multicurrency structures, while providing working capital facilities, inventory financing and strategic loans aligned to expansion cycles.
Finally, Citi integrated lending with FX hedging and broader capital structure dialogue, helping Dollarcity reduce operational complexity, improve governance around funding strategy and gain real-time visibility over cash across several Latin American markets. Relationships such as this show Citi operating as not just a domestic corporate lender but as a regional treasury and financing partner.
