Verónica Dos Santos and Carla Espinatto (May 2015)

This is a dissertation written for the International Master’s degree in Entrepreneurial Finance at Madrid’s Autónoma University, under the supervision of Claudio González-Vega (PhD.) and Luis Calvo Soux (MSc). The research attempts to identify relevant features of the regulations regarding a simplified format for opening bank accounts, known as Cuentas de Expediente Simplificado (CES), in several Latin-American countries, in order to assess their potential impact on financial inclusion. Although low-income people often manage to save, they do not usually do so through a savings or deposit account in a formal financial institution. Know Your Customer policies (KYC) for avoiding money laundering and the financing of terrorism have created access barriers, making it hard for the least well-off to obtain financial services, as financial institutions are now obliged to request documents to identify their customers that poor people often do not have or cannot afford.

The CES were created as a means to overcome these barriers, simplifying the process of opening an account, by reducing the number of documents and other time-consuming arrangements required to open a savings account. Above all, they are intended to make it easier to open and manage accounts using non-traditional touchpoints, such as mobile banking, internet banking or banking agents in order to reduce customers’ needs to go to a bricks-and-mortar branch to solve their problems.

The dissertation assesses the impact of this possibility on the financial inclusion of people in eight Latin-American countries: Brazil, Colombia, Ecuador, Guatemala, Mexico, Panama, Paraguay and Peru. It identifies the key features of CES and the distribution channels that it enables. It compiles and reviews the relevant literature on already existing initiatives of this kind, and provides a comparative analysis of the laws and regulations in the countries studied. It also gives interviews with experts from various Latin-American countries involved in the development, implementation and regulation of CES.