On January 16th, President Sebastián Piñera announced in an official ceremony the promulgation of Law 21.130 that modernizes the banking legislation. During the same meeting, Finance Minister Felipe Larraín said that the new banking regulatory body arising from the merger of the Financial Market Commission (CMF) and the Superintendency of Banks and Financial Institutions (SBIF) will enter into force on June 1st, 2019.

As of June, all the institutions that have until now been supervised by the Superintendency will fall under the purview of the CMF, among them, banks, credit or payment cards. According to Larraín, “both institutions feel reassured that they will be able to make an integration process without risks to the system”. The deadline also marks the beginning of the 18-month period for the CMF to regulate the fulfillment of articles 55 bis, 66 ter, 66 quater and 67 of Decree 3/1997 which orders the text of the General Banking Law.

With the modernization of banking legislation, the Executive Branch aims to achieve an integrated supervision model, in which banking regulation and supervision will be overseen by a single authority with a global view of the financial market. From this perspective, the SBIF’s corporate and unipersonal governance structure “moved away from the internationally recommended standards to face the challenges and needs of regulation”.