Jiutepec, Mor. Although the Popular Financial Companies (Sofipos) have managed to reach the lowest segment of the population pyramid, that is, lower-income families, they face a series of regulatory obstacles that prevent them from including more people in the financial system, such as a “banking monopoly on payroll accounts” or the refusal by the authorities to provide point-of-sale terminals to small businesses.
In a panel held during the first day of activities of the 9th Convention of the Mexican Association of Sofipos (AMS), its president, Juan Francisco Fernández, said that thanks to the regulatory changes that have been made throughout this six-year term, these entities have reached the majority of the population in the last six years.
“Since the beginning of this administration, there have been very favorable changes in favor of competition, which we had not seen before, and we hope that this continues; for example, the reform in the prevention of money laundering allowed us to expand technology and reach every corner of the country without having to invest in logistics and for products to reach every corner,” said the president of the AMS.
He added that without this reform to the provisions for preventing money laundering, “the entities that have come to invest heavily in the sector would surely have sought another type of financial institution… This brings real competition to the traditional financial sector.”
However, Vicente Fenoll, founder and CEO of Kubo Financiero, one of the Sofipos with the largest presence in the country, raised a series of difficulties that these credit institutions face, which cause Mexico to “lose the opportunity to be the spearhead of financial technology in Latin America.”
He exemplified that “in Mexico, the banks have a monopoly on payrolls and their portability, which is why a financial reform must be carried out. It is in the law that only the banking sector can have payrolls.
“Then there is digital money, doing it in Mexico, compared to Brazil or Colombia, where it costs pennies, is very expensive. If I go to a self-service store to make a deposit, they will charge me, as an individual, 13 pesos, and another equal amount to us as a financial institution, so digitizing 500 pesos is high,” he said.
In this regard, Fenoll considered that a “large part of the cost of interest in Mexico is the commissions that have to be paid to the distribution chains, to these large stores, that is where the money monopoly is, for us opening a system of correspondents is very expensive.”
He added that under the law, Sofipos are also not allowed to provide point-of-sale terminals to small businesses, something that is counterproductive “if we consider that these small shops in the country have an account with us, they are our clients.”
The series of complaints were heard by Alfredo Navarrete Martínez, head of the Banking, Securities and Savings Unit of the Ministry of Finance and Public Credit (SHCP), who, without being on the panel, asked for a microphone to tell those present that these issues are currently being worked on by the authorities, and even made a proposal to have a meeting with the participants of the sector to talk about it.
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– 2024-09-02 14:29:29
