Haiti’s first national private bank, Banque de l’Union Haitienne (BUH) and Moneygram, the second largest global money transfer joined forces on Wednesday April 20 2011. This partnership between the two companies will allow them to offer Moneygram’s large range of remittance services at an affordable price to a larger scale of the Haitian population.
This new partnership constitutes a comeback on the transfer market and should increase revenues for BUH, enabling the bank to offer new products and services to their costumer, according to the bank General Director Mr. Marcel Fortin. It will also broaden Moneygram’s service network in Haiti with 11 additional counters in five provincial towns.
This partnership should place BUH/Moneygram in fourth position in the Haitian remittance market behind Unitransfert, CAM transfer and Sogexpress/AFS (Western Union). We should note this venture is not the first undertaking in this market for BUH and its shareholders, Socatransfer (a money transfer company) was acquired by Abi Bank Ltd an associate that owns 45% interest in BUH, though the socatransfer brand was write down due to lower revenue than anticipated.
At press conference were present Mr. Marcel Fortin and Bernard Desgraff respectively General Director and VP of Marketing for BUH and on the Moneygram side Steve Higgins, Caribbean region manager and Daniel J O’Malley VP for the Americas
Mr. Higgins stressed out that such initiative will strengthen the connection between Haitian at home and those abroad.
He also noted that” Moneygram ranks second among the transfer companies in the world, offers the best prices, the best facilities and fast processing since a Moneygram transfer is available to the recipient 10 minutes.
On the social responsibility aspect Moneygram have been a really active company, the day following the January 12 earthquake, the company reduced his transfer fees to 1 dollar. Moneygram collected a 250,000 and donated it to the Red Cross added Mr. Higgins.
Moneygram with a total of 227000 agent locations around the world to send and receive cash especially in North America and Europe should constitute a good opportunity for the Diaspora and a new begin for BUH.
