On September 21, the Superintendency of Banking, Insurance and Pension Fund Administrators (SBS) announced that it is working on a bill to speed up the electronic contracting of products and services offered by financial institutions. The Congress is also studying its own initiative to make the untying of service contracts effective within 48 hours.

SBS Superintendent Socorro Heysen explained that the institution is working together with other public entities to introduce a bill that “will allow more people to access financial products and services.” The idea of the initiative, which is expected to be filed soon in Congress, will be to regulate remote customer identity verification using digital tools to speed up the process to contract electronic products and services.

Although people can currently take out loans, order credit cards and open savings accounts through electronic channels, such as websites, to complete the process they have to go to a financial institution office in person to verify their identity. The new initiative aims to facilitate remote verification by using new Internet technologies.

This announcement came after the Consumer Protection Committee passed an initiative to allow people to end service contracts, including financial ones, within 48 hours using digital channels. The bill is currently being questioned by the Association of Banks, as in addition to the contractual untying, it allows the conditions to be modified once the term of the contract has expired.

The SBS is expected to file the bill with Congress in the coming days, and  Heysen anticipated requesting congressmen to back the approval of this initiative.