Caixa Economica Federal (CEF)

Caixa headquarters in Brasilia, Brazil

Caixa Econômica Federal (CEF or CAIXA) is a government-owned Brazilian savings bank founded on January 12, 1861 by Emperor Dom Pedro II. CAIXA is one of the largest Brazilian banks and the largest public bank in Latin America. It offers a wide range of financial services including current and savings accounts, salary accounts, personal and home loans, lines of credit, debit and credit cards, investments, insurance services, online and phone banking and more. With about 82,000 employees, CAIXA serves more than 38 million customers through over 17,000 locations and some 19,000 ATMs (for example, Bank of America has the largest number of ATMs in the US - about 18,500). There are 8,5 million current account holders and more than 30 million savers, which corresponds to 34% of all the national savings market. Caixa Economica Federal serves not only its clients, but the whole Brazilian population through lotteries, urban infrastructure investments and social programs payments. It is the manager of most Brazilian lotteries, especially the most popular ones, such as Mega-Sena, Quina and Loteca. The bank is also the main fiscal agent for the government. As of December 31, 2011, CEF had R$516.494 billion (US$277.2 billion) in total assets and R$254.697 billion (US$136.7 billion) in customer deposits. Maria Fernanda Ramos Coelho is the President of Caixa Economica Federal.