Expansão dos Correspondentes Bancários no Brasil: uma análise empírica

The economic literature considers that the presence of financial providers is an important component to allow access to financial services and, consequently, to the socio-economic development. There has been an important growth in the number of banking correspondents in various regions of Brazil in the past years. Banking correspondents are retail agents, like post offices, lottery kiosks and drugstores that, in addition to its main activity, offer financial services of some financial institutions. They consist of an innovation that reduces costs and the scale needed to offer financial services, therefore improving the ability of financial institutions to reach out customers in remote areas. The aim of this study is to investigate the determinants of the spread process of banking correspondents in the country between 2000 and 2008, years of its major expansion as well as seek to understand the role played by them. The results show the existence of a substitution relationship between bank branches and correspondents. In addition, there are evidences that the correspondents’ customers is not completely similar to the bank branches’ because the results indicate that correspondents direct themselves to low-income regions. Moreover, it was found that government benefits is an important factor influencing banking correspondents’ expansion and no evidences were found that the correspondents direct themselves to remote regions.