The purpose of this research is to identify corporate social responsibility and financial sustainability characteristics that would make the private Ecuadorian banking sector more competitive. Based on the experience and accounts of key departmental leaders, this study applied a cross-sectional and descriptive-exploratory approach in order to describe the actions and behaviors that private national banks have taken to make their organizations more competitive. The main results focus on determining how national private banks assume social responsibility roles and confront them with other internal and external challenges. These results lead to conclude that maintaining a sustainable finance agenda is both attractive to banking investors and contributes to the industry’s competitiveness.