Bank of the Republic of Haiti

The oldest reference to a bank in Haiti can be attributed to a short correspondence exchanged during September 1825 between a foreign tradesman, Nicholas Kane, the Secretary of State Balthazar Inginac about a proposal made by George Clark in the name of a German group, Hermann Hendrick and Co., to establish a bank in Haiti. However, the proposal was never accepted, and Hermann Hendrick and Co. was never established.

A Haitian law of 1880 allowed for a currency issuance concession to be granted to a privileged bank, and the National Bank of Haiti was subsequently established in Paris in early 1881 by the French bank Crédit Industriel et Commercial. In October 1910, the issuance concession was transferred to a new bank, the National Bank of the Republic of Haiti (BNRH) formed by a consortium of French, German and American interests. The National City Bank of New York took over the BNRH following the United States occupation of Haiti, and gained full ownership in 1919. In 1935, the Haitian government acquired the BNRH from National City Bank. In 1979, BNRH was split into two financial institutions: the Banque nationale de crédit (BNC), a commercial bank, and the Bank of the Republic of Haiti.