Why I have positive approach in business and life – Bison Bank CEO
António Henriques is the CEO of Bison Bank and chairman of the board of its subsidiary Bison Digital Assets, the first entity owned by a Portuguese bank authorised to operate in the virtual assets sector. He oversees around 60 staff at the Lisbon-based bank.
I started as a 22-year-old clerk at the biggest bank in Portugal, Millennium BCP, and 30 years later I am CEO of a bank.
My journey is about a lot of people who have helped me along the way. But Carlos Martins was my first boss as BCP’s managing director and he led me to where I am today.
He saw me as a special person and every year, until he passed away last summer, he always used to phone me. He gave me the learnings that I am still using today: the understanding that bosses are there to guide us and give us tools to use in the future.
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We had lots of similar traits and connections, we both wrote left handed and perhaps the way I sit today was through him as well.
I once told him that ‘I don’t think I can do what you ask me.’ But Carlos gave me the confidence to do it and saw in me huge potential that I wasn’t seeing at the time. He is the reason I am a CEO today.
He taught me to be hands on. When Carlos gave us a project he introduced it as someone who knew everything about it. It gave us the confidence that if we made a mistake we were able to be corrected. Today I always try to guide and be side by side with my staff.
He also taught me how to deliver on client expectations. We would be in meetings and unsure whether we could deliver in, say, two weeks. The first answer from Carlos would always be ‘yes, we will for sure’.
Carlos’ leadership taught me to try new things and be positive about them. Even today I never build a phrase in a negative way, even in my personal life. But Carlos never explicitly told me that was how I should speak, it was just that he always spoke with a positive approach and it caught on.
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In investment banking areas, we are always speaking about innovation. If we have a company buying another company it’s a sort of innovation as we need to study the financials, the market and build something which will have value in the company.
There are no other banks in Portugal with crypto. For me, it’s how to add value in the world and be different. It’s not easy to innovate in global banking but one day I was reading up on crypto and I shared a text with my shareholders with an idea.
This innovation isn’t just about Portugal. When I go to Hong Kong or Shanghai, people recognise Bison Bank as a crypto leader — for me that is interesting and you realise the size of innovation this way.
As a small country, it’s not easy to do business in a bank like ours in Portugal. Small banks need to find specific international business. For each new account at Bison Bank, 99 out of 100 are non-Portuguese and we are doing things the other way around in capturing international clients.
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Another big difference is that other Portuguese banks are trying to capture their clients to be their first bank. I can’t capture an international client to be their first in Portugal as they aren’t here. By design we are putting Bison as our clients second or third bank. That’s how we are positioning ourselves.
Fifty percent of our clients are from the US, and others are from Brazil, Turkey, South Africa and Asia.
Our customers are from places with political risks and we are telling clients to have a back up plan. Crypto is just another complimentary piece to our business.
António Henriques was speaking at the 2023 Web Summit in Lisbon
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