Brasilia - Corporate debt issuance operations are traditionally dominated by large, established banks. Last year, the Brazilian capital market reached a record R$ 838.8 billion in public offerings, a 6.4% increase compared to the previous year. Itaú BBA led the ranking of issuers with R$ 143.6 billion, but an intruder appeared in the top positions.

An unusual name in the capital markets, Caixa Econômica Federal, a 100% publicly owned bank, has been taking important steps in this segment, targeting medium-sized companies and leveraging its aptitude for the real estate market, focusing primarily on construction companies located outside the Rio-São Paulo axis.

The state-owned bank reached R$ 10.9 billion in corporate debt issuances in 2025, a record result for the institution and representing a 33% growth compared to the volume contracted in the previous year.

With this milestone, the bank joined, for the first time, the list of the 10 largest players in the capital markets, according to a ranking by the Brazilian Association of Financial and Capital Markets (Anbima) based on volume originated from fixed income and hybrid investments, referring to the position of financial institutions last year.

The state-owned bank's momentum in this area is striking when one examines its results from previous years: the amount recorded throughout last year represents more than four times (an increase of 234.7%) the value reached two years ago, in 2023, when it reached R$ 3.2 billion.

To that end, in 2025 alone Caixa Asset conducted 55 coordinated debt offerings originated by its wholesale network. The strategy to target this market began to take shape more forcefully from December 2020, when the bank created a vertical dedicated exclusively to the capital markets.

These results came through the issuance of real estate receivables certificates (CRI) and agribusiness receivables certificates (CRA), debentures, commercial notes, and so-called Credit Rights Investment Funds (FIDC), focusing on raising funds for financing large companies.

In this scenario, the bank began to see opportunities in a growing market that, in the view of its executives, had undergone a structural transformation, at a time when the bank detected that debt instruments were becoming a central part of the financing strategy of large companies.

“This demand, which used to be cyclical, has now become structural,” says Tarso Duarte de Tassis, vice president of wholesale banking at Caixa, to NeoFeed .

Real estate secret

This level exceeding R$10 billion was achieved, in the bank's view, cautiously, gradually, and with a clear decision to grab ever larger chunks of this market and face the competition, even though Caixa was a player without tradition or great relevance in this sector.

First, the bank projected its growth through the expansion of traditional loan portfolios and then focused on offering a more complete portfolio, which it did not have before. As the treasury's appetite grew with the expansion of the private portfolio, the state-owned bank also sought to get closer to asset management firms.

“As the market matures, the client doesn’t just want to raise capital. They want the structure that best suits their cash flow, their sector, and their project. We are expanding the range of relevant players in the market, which is healthy for the system as a whole,” adds the VP of Wholesale.

To achieve this, the bank structured its capital market operations and selected and trained over 1,000 officers throughout the country to strengthen the origination and management of these deals. Today, there are 53 business offices focused on medium-sized companies ( middle market , i.e., companies with annual revenue between R$ 50 million and R$ 1 billion) and 10 corporate offices. In addition, there is a network of regional offices and a vice-presidency dedicated to adapting the bank's business to corporate practices.

This strategy also aligns with the bank's expertise in mortgage lending, which in this case was used to originate corporate debt operations in a planned and increasing manner. In this sense, Caixa's capital markets area established, last year, an exclusive arm to serve the construction sector, focused on enabling small and medium-sized enterprises in the sector to access the capital market.

NeoFeed also found that this strategy focused on the construction sector also targets investors in the real estate market, one of the areas the bank identified as having the potential for further growth through the issuance of CRIs (Real Estate Receivables Certificates) and traditional capital market operations, as funding options for the sector.

In this context, Caixa already envisions further growth in this area, acknowledging that there is room to expand lending in the capital markets, since the ratio between its private credit portfolio and the state-owned bank's total portfolio is still lower than that of the main banks operating in this corporate debt segment. Even with this unprecedented result, the bank ended 2025 with only a 1.9% market share in Brazil.

The state-owned bank does not disclose its projections, but according to data from January 2026, the latest data available from Anbima, it has even climbed another position in the capital market ranking: it was the 9th largest player in this capital market race, with R$ 540 million originated in the first month of this year.

"Caixa expects to maintain a consistent pace of hiring until the end of 2026, even in a scenario of high interest rates," says Tassis.

For this year, the bank's asset management area is focused on growth with attention directed towards large corporate restructuring cases, the volatile global scenario that may impose future restrictions on a sharper drop in the benchmark interest rate (Selic), and a context of a potentially shorter year in market terms.