After assuming the highest position in Millennium bim’s hierarchy in May this year, the bank’s now chairmans has actually had a difficult career to match. From the counter to the commercial area, he has grown in his career with an unusual ‘devotion to the company’ of an institution where he has been since day one, and where he has spent the last 29 years of his professional life.
What have these first few months been like as chairmans of a bank you saw come into being and where you started working almost 30 years ago?
It’s been interesting, because I’ve come to this point from the bottom. And unlike many people who are invited to a position like this, where they don’t know the place, my case is totally different.
The novelty has to do with the new challenges of the bank, of the market, but I don’t feel like the most important figure in the Bank because we’re all important. Today I deal more with institutional, statutory, regulatory and corporate governance aspects.
I noticed that you said with some pride that you started your career ‘down there’…
In fact, I’ve been here for 29 years and this journey is almost as long as one of my children, for example. So you can see how important this institution has been in my personal life and in my career.
You’re now more distant from the operational area, don’t you miss it?
Strangely enough, I don’t miss the past very much. What has passed has been lived intensely, and life goes on.
And looking ahead?
There’s a huge challenge, because bim is now a major brand. The truth is that when we started, we truly made a financial ‘revolution’ in the Mozambican context. You could say anything, but there is a before and after bim. Looking back at those who preceded me, truly exceptional people like Mário Machungo or Rui Fonseca, I can say that it’s a great challenge, not only to maintain Millennium bim’s course, but also, of course, to introduce, with my colleagues, some innovations to further improve the quality of our services, the notoriety of the brand, elevating it to a kind of unavoidable bim for the consumer.
What do you mean when you say that there is a before and after bim in the financial sector in Mozambique?
I’m referring to the way banking is done. For those who are older, there is this perception. Nowadays, people don’t realise that until the mid-1990s, when bim came onto the market, we didn’t have credit cards, debit cards, ATMs or online payment systems. And on 25 October 1995, that happened. That day the financial sector changed in the country.
‘I don’t feel like the most important figure in the bank because we’re all important’
From the counter to leading the bank, his personal and professional life is inextricably linked to the Bank’s journey of almost 30 years. You went to Portugal at the age of 22 to study and work. How important was this stage in your life?
Yes, I went to Portugal to study. It was an unlikely route, because normally people went abroad through the system that existed at the time. I went through friends, priests, it was a different path. And that certainly changed the way I was and the way I saw things. I was a communist on Thursday night and when I landed in Lisbon the next day, I was totally different, confronted with everything that was contrary to what was happening here at the time. And then the experience with the people, that very political phase in Portugal, with the debates between Mário Soares, Álvaro Cunhal, in fact, quickly transformed my mentality and the way I saw the world.
And you ended up staying there and starting your career…
Yes, a number of years. I started dating in Portugal. I bought my first car there, my first house, my children…
But then your life took a turn and you returned to Mozambique in 1995 to open a new bank, bim. What was that return like?
It wasn’t even Millennium at the time, it was a BCP operation, which was going to open a bank in conjunction with the Mozambican state. I went for the interview and joined the first training team. I even thought I probably wouldn’t return to Mozambique. I was integrated, I was going about my life as normal, and the environment wasn’t the most attractive for someone who had already had Western experience. But then, with the changes that had taken place in the country and with the specific BCP project, which had also been a revolutionary bank in Portugal, I felt that there was something to experience. It was an investment on my part. I arrived in August, after 10 years away.
To be part of the initial team of a new bank, in a country that, to a certain extent, and after a decade of living abroad, is also new to you. What memories do you have of that moment?
It was very interesting, even utopian. We were a group of young people, ready to revolutionise the financial sector and start all over again. Customers were coming through our doors, because everyone wanted to have one of our cards, they wanted to have a cheque from bim, it was all new. And we were doing what we liked best, which was really selling, publicising the bank, a project that was completely different from what existed, at least with the modernity and innovation we brought. That was our motto: innovation and modernity in the country’s financial system.
What role did you come for?
I was trained in Porto to be a credit analyst. But when I arrived in Mozambique, Lima Félix, who was the first managing director, a man from the north of Portugal with that very direct manner, said to me: ‘Moisés, there’s no credit to analyse but there is a bank in the making and it needs to make itself known to the market, so you’ll move into the commercial area’. And that’s how I entered the commercial area. You see, I’m very shy and I thought it was a challenge I probably wouldn’t overcome because I had to deal and interact with people in order to ‘sell’ the bank, sell the products, face rejections, objections…
So you started at the bottom…
Actually, yes. The commercial ‘bug’ started there, I was one of the first, that day, to become an account manager, and later I was appointed client manager. Then it was the seemingly normal route, or not, but that’s what it was. I was an account manager, then commercial director of the retail network, we opened Private Banking at Armando Tivane, and it wasn’t until much later that I moved into the corporate area. I was the first director of the quality department, an ‘out of the box’ concept in the market at the time, and I worked in the Recruitment, Integration and People Development department. At the time, there was a semi-separation between the more conventional HR department, which did the administrative and payroll work, and a specific area dedicated to recruiting, training, integrating and developing talent.
However, in 2002, you returned to Portugal again. Why did you return?
Yes, I’m a family man and in 2002, roughly, I returned to Portugal and Mr Jardim Gonçalves told me that I would have a position at the bank in Braga, in the north, where I had already lived. I started at the bank’s branch in that city, travelling through Porto, Lisbon, in various areas, always in contact with the operational area and combining it with the commercial area.
And you stayed there until 2006. How did you come to return to Mozambique?
Because I was told, and I agreed, that where my experience was really needed was in Mozambique. And so I returned to head up Corporate Banking and continue with my unexpected passion, the commercial area, where I stayed until 2015, when, once again, the shareholders realised that they had to recompose the Executive Committee. And that’s when I joined it, until the first quarter of 2024.
What were the personal and professional milestones for you in those experiences abroad?
I usually value the institutional and the team much more. In other words, rather than what Moisés did or didn’t do, I prefer to value what the team he was part of did. And one of the things that really stood out for me was starting the bank in a different way, segmenting the market. And it was also remarkable because, at the time, we were doing what ‘Afro-pessimism’ doesn’t allow us to do.
In what respect?
We know that the failure rate for projects in Mozambique and on the African continent is very high. And we managed to break that myth. Then, being part of a multicultural, multigenerational and multifunctional team was something special. Finally, I remember the merger with BCM, which was something extraordinary, two culturally different organisations.
At any point in those early years did you imagine that this small bank, with just over 65 employees, would one day, almost 30 years later, become a systemic bank? Was there already such a plan or perspective? To be honest, no, we weren’t thinking about it, but there was something that was holding us back. What was it?
The fact that the bank came from a parent company that had made history in the financial sector in Portugal in just a few years. And that did give us a certain hope that this project would create a benchmark bank in the country, despite the context I was talking about, because Mozambique was in the process of transitioning from a planned economy to a market economy and that had its challenges.
The experience of ‘banking’ in Portugal is different here. How do you deal with it?
Creativity is required here because day-to-day life doesn’t have the facilities that Europe has. All the infrastructure is there and, what’s more, there are countless people who are prepared and trained, not just in their day-to-day lives, but through schools and experience, and here it’s different. Therefore, the demands on banking professionals here, in my opinion, are greater, because they have to be creative and proactive in order for things to happen.
There are two things about your career that are a little different from usual. The first is your career, here and there, and how you came to be the chairmans of a bank you practically already knew. The other is the fact that you’ve spent your entire career at the same institution, which is unusual in Mozambique’s financial sector. Why have you never changed?
Yes, I stayed here, despite the millionaire offers I received because the bim project, for me, was never a path I came to just for the money, but because I always thought the bank was a school. It still is today. It’s hard to find a bank in Mozambique where there isn’t someone who hasn’t been here. But today’s young people are impatient, and I understand their impatience perfectly, because I have children like that too. They’re looking to solve their immediate problems, and this means that many move around a lot and don’t gain professional roots.
“bim was never a path I came to just for the money, but because I always thought banking was a school. And it is”
What advice would you give these young people if you could?
I’m not one to give advice, but to share what I think. It’s good to try out different cultures, it’s good to try out different organisations, but at some point you have to stabilise yourself. Having many employers on your CV in a short space of time is not a good sign. Being proactive, self-taught and curious is one of the things that young people should cultivate. John F. Kennedy’s expression should always be in mind: what can I do for the organisation? Without passively waiting for the organisation to always do something for me.
A few months ago you took over as Millennium bim’s chairmans. What is the agenda and main mission of your mandate?
One of the missions I have as head of the organisation, and bearing in mind some of the upheavals we’ve had recently with the queues at our branches, is to invest heavily in technology so that our branches are as modern as possible and can really respond to our customers’ concerns. Next, we need to stabilise the electronic payment system and we’re already working on that. Finally, another theme has to do with social responsibility. We want to share with the community what the community gives us, without forgetting the reduction of the ecological footprint and the energy transition. We already have branches that run on solar panels, and we’re going to build a solar park right here at the head office. Good governance, transparency, accountability, gender equity and opportunities for everyone who works here. We are one of the most robust banks in the market and we want to maintain and strengthen this robustness in the medium and long term. Ethics, integrity, seriousness and honesty, as I often say, are values we don’t negotiate because our greatest value is trust.
How do you see Mozambique in the coming years? Do you feel the path to prosperityis open , or not so much?
One thing is obvious to me: as a person and as a representative of the Millennium bim institution, we have absolute confidence in this country and that it is possible to turn it into a key player on the regional and, why not, world stage, not least because of the resources we have. That said, Millennium bim, as I often say, works like a lung or a heart that pumps blood to the rest of our organism and we have given the market enough resources for our companies, families and people to invest. And we are certainly prepared and will have the capacity, liquidity and capital to do so. We are doing our part and the different players who manage monetary policy, fiscal policy and each of us, the companies, need to do their part. I often say that God has given Mozambique a lot in terms of investment in natural resources, landscapes, territory and people. Now we’re missing a part and it’s up to us, responsibly, to play our part. I would say that, essentially, the country is going to have to invest in what takes longer to produce results.
In what?
Education, which is a necessary condition. Without education, at the base, and from a technical-professional point of view, it will be difficult to develop the country.
From your many years of experience dealing with the private sector, don’t you think that a large slice of the business sector in Mozambique is lacking a bit of what is known today as the entrepreneurial mindset, of wanting to do well, to grow?
If companies aren’t responsible, if there’s a lack of transparency, if there’s no accountability, fairness and risk management, they certainly won’t survive in the market. Sometimes people forget that a bank is a company, it has shareholders and it sells a special product, which is money, and that’s why there has to be a degree of certainty and trust in the investments we make.
Pedro Cativelos
