OREANDA-NEWS. September 28, 2012. Santa Purgaile has been elected by the Citadele Bank’s council as a member of the bank’s board. She has 18 years of experience in the banking sector, including nine years in managing various areas of business operations. Santa’s addition to the board means that the membership of the board once again satisfies statutory requirements in terms of having five members, reported the press-centre of Citadele Bank.

“Santa Purgaile is a professional with long years of experience in the banking sector,” says the chairman of the Citadele council, Klavs Vasks. “She has managed areas such as corporate services, support services and private banking services, and in this she will make a key contribution to Citadele’s professional management team. I am sure that this will help our bank to achieve even better business results.”

As the new board member, Santa will be responsible for the development and management of the banking group’s existing and future business operations in Latvia and the Baltic region. She will work on business strategies and their implementation in various areas of client services and sales.

“Santa Purgaile will certainly help our management team to develop the bank so that Citadele becomes the most valuable local bank in the Baltic States and makes sure that our clients always recommend the bank to others,” says Citadele board chairman Guntis Belavskis. “Client services at the highest level of quality, stable development of our business, and identification of business opportunities in various business segments – those will be Santa Purgaile’s main areas of focus as she works for Citadele.”

Santa Purgaile has 18 years of experience in the banking sector. She spent nine years running various areas of business operations at the SEB Bank. She headed the bank’s private banking operations for Latvia and the Baltic States. She has also served as director of the SEB Bank’s SME Business Support and, previously, the Vidzeme region for the bank. Santa earned a bachelor’s degree in business management at the Turiba School of Business and a master’s degree in international economics and business at the University of Latvia.

The search for a new board member was conducted by the Citadele council, which looked at senior professionals in Latvia’s financial sector in this regard. Prior to Santa’s appointment, the job of handling business development functions was in the hands of board chairman Belavskis.

Santa Purgaile will join a board at which Belavskis has 10 years of experience in the banking sector and more than 15 years of experience with management positions. Her colleagues on the board will be Valters Abele, who has years of experience with auditing and financial consulting and manages Citadele’s risk management operations; Kaspars Cikmacs, who has 16 years of experience in the banking sector and manages administrative services, information technologies, administration, security, encashment and support for banking operations for Citadele; and Philip Allard, who has 25 years of experience in the financial sector and oversees the Citadele Bank’s finance and resource management operations.