Costa Rica Co-ops Vote to Merge, Workers' Fate Unsettled

Delegates from two of Costa Rica’s savings and credit cooperatives voted on 17 October 2026 to merge, creating a member-owned financial group with about 1.62 trillion colones, roughly US$3.58 billion, in assets. Coopenae will absorb CoopeAnde, which will dissolve as a legal entity. The vote counts weren’t published, and hundreds of jobs and dozens of branches still hang in the balance.

Delegates approved the merger in separate extraordinary assemblies at the Costa Rica Convention Center. Reports said organizers announced the result after 5 p.m. They didn’t release the number of delegates present or how they voted. Regulators and the competition authority must sign off before the merger takes effect.

Who Is Affected

The cooperatives’ members and workers have the most at stake. Coopenae has 798 direct employees and CoopeAnde has 437, and together they run 38 branches. Coopenae general manager Adrián Álvarez said most staff would remain, but headcount wouldn’t stay exactly the same. He said the cooperatives would decide the branch plan only after approval, since some locations sit close together.

That leaves many people waiting. No staffing or branch plan has been published. Álvarez will stay on as Coopenae’s general manager. CoopeAnde general manager Alexandra Márquez Massino is to advise on integration, but the cooperatives haven’t specified her longer-term role.

For members, the cooperatives made firm promises. Both said they’d keep operating normally while approvals are pending, and members would keep their current products, services and contracts. Deposits and obligations would transfer to Coopenae on the originally agreed terms, including term and interest rate. Loans would keep their agreed conditions. The combined loan portfolio stands at 1.09 trillion colones, about US$2.40 billion.

Álvarez also said CoopeAnde members’ share capital would pass “intact” to Coopenae, with each member’s seniority and assembly rights unchanged. Audited 2025 accounts put member share capital at 100.2 billion colones, about US$221 million, at Coopenae and 85.6 billion colones, about US$189 million, at CoopeAnde.

The Case for Scale, and the Regulatory Hurdles

The managers argue that size will help. They said the larger group could fund technology and corporate-governance investment and meet tougher regulatory demands. Álvarez estimated that reaching the same market share on his own could take Coopenae 10 to 15 years. Márquez Massino said the decision answered a long-term vision in the face of technological change. Álvarez called the vote a concrete step toward consolidation and said the cooperatives would now move through regulatory stages responsibly.

The approval process has several steps. The cooperatives must formalize their request to Sugef, the financial regulator, which reviews the plan and sends it to Conassif, the national council that supervises the financial system. They also need clearance from Coprocom, the competition commission. Álvarez told El Financiero he expected the requirements to be met by December 2026, and the cooperatives said the stages should finish before year-end. An internal merger process could then take one or two years.

That December timetable reflects the cooperatives’ expectation, not a commitment by regulators. No approval or decision date has been published. Sugef says the organizations remain under separate supervision until a final decision.

A New Heavyweight in Private Finance

Sugef’s July 2026 data show Coopenae with assets of 948.2 billion colones, about US$2.09 billion, and CoopeAnde with 674.2 billion colones, about US$1.49 billion. El Financiero said the combined group would be Costa Rica’s fourth-largest private financial intermediary, ahead of Banco Promérica, with 1.35 trillion colones, about US$2.98 billion, and Grupo Mutual, with 1.06 trillion colones, about US$2.34 billion. La Nación used figures dated 1 August and rounded the combined assets to about 1.6 trillion colones, or about US$3.5 billion. Dollar conversions use the central bank’s reference selling rate of 453.48 colones per U.S. dollar on 18 October 2026.

The sources didn’t name a single trigger for the merger beyond the managers’ stated aims of scale and competitiveness. CRHoy noted that each cooperative has about 60 years of operating history.

Why This Matters: Cooperatives belong to their members, not outside shareholders. A merger this large tests whether that ownership model can compete at scale without leaving members and workers behind. The managers’ promises on deposits, loans and share capital are specific, and regulators will decide whether the plan protects the people who own these institutions. The hardest questions remain open: how many of the 1,235 combined employees keep their jobs, which branches close, and how much say ordinary members have after officials kept the vote counts unpublished. Public oversight by Sugef, Conassif and Coprocom will put those concerns to the test. Communities served by nearby branches could lose local access, while workers have no published plan to rely on. Consolidation may bring investment, but transparency now will determine whether members trust the result.