Dr. Luigi Wewege, President of Caye International Bank (CIB), has officially been awarded his Doctor of Philosophy (PhD), marking the culmination of a multi-year academic journey dedicated to advancing financial stability across Central America. His achievement represents not only a personal milestone, but also a significant scholarly contribution to understanding and mitigating retail banking crises in emerging markets.
Dr. Wewege completed his doctoral research through the International School of Management (ISM) in Paris. His dissertation, Analyzing Retail Banking Crises in Central America: Causes, Consequences, Policy Responses, and Future Implications for Financial Stability in the Region, examines one of the region’s most critical yet under-examined vulnerabilities: instability within retail banking systems. The research provides a comprehensive, evidence-based evaluation of why banking disruptions occur, how they impact economies and households, and what institutional reforms can reduce the likelihood and severity of future crises.
Central America continues to face structural financial challenges, including concentrated banking sectors, limited financial inclusion, exposure to external shocks, and correspondent banking pressures. Against this backdrop, Dr. Wewege’s work offers both timely insight and practical relevance. His study integrates econometric modeling, comparative historical analysis, and elite interviews with senior policymakers, regulators, and banking executives across multiple jurisdictions. This blended methodology bridges academic rigor with real-world application, ensuring the research remains grounded in operational realities.
“This doctorate was not pursued as a purely academic exercise,” Dr. Luigi Wewege noted. “It was driven by a clear objective: to produce research that can meaningfully improve how financial systems in Central America are regulated, managed, and future proofed.”
A core contribution of the dissertation is its identification of recurring structural weaknesses that have contributed to past retail banking crises. These include governance failures, regulatory gaps, excessive credit concentration, weak risk management frameworks, and delayed or fragmented policy responses. Importantly, the research highlights the disproportionate impact of banking crises on everyday depositors, small businesses, and emerging middle classes of society most reliant on stable retail banking infrastructure.
Rather than analyzing crises in isolation, Dr. Wewege employed a comparative regional framework, examining both crisis and non-crisis periods across multiple countries. This approach enables policymakers to distinguish between country-specific failures and systemic regional vulnerabilities, offering a clearer roadmap for preventative reform.
The dissertation also presents actionable policy recommendations aimed at strengthening resilience. These include enhanced prudential supervision, improved early-warning indicators, stronger crisis-management coordination, and more robust depositor protection mechanisms. Emphasis is placed on transparency, regulatory independence, and institutional credibility as essential pillars of sustained public confidence in financial systems.
Dr. Wewege brings more than two decades of international banking and financial services experience to his academic work. As President of Caye International Bank, he has overseen the institution’s expansion into Belize’s largest international bank, serving clients across multiple jurisdictions. This professional background informs the applied focus of his research, ensuring its findings are both practical and implementable.
Further underscoring its impact, the doctoral thesis has been accepted for publication as a full academic textbook by De Gruyter Brill, with release anticipated in 2026. The forthcoming volume will expand upon the dissertation’s findings and make them accessible to policymakers, regulators, academics, and financial practitioners globally.
“A stable banking system is not a luxury, it is a prerequisite for economic development, investment, and social mobility,” Dr. Luigi Wewege stated. “If this research helps even one country avoid a future banking crisis, then the years invested in this doctorate will have been well worth it.”
Through this work, Dr. Wewege seeks to ensure that lessons drawn from Central America’s banking experiences contribute meaningfully to regional reform and the broader global discourse on financial stability and crisis prevention.