Racionalidad de la metodología para la fijación de los intereses bancarios en Colombia

Abstract

The current methodology to set the bank interest rate in Colombia, has its legal basis in the Organic Statute of the Financial System, where it was arranged in Title Five, that the Financial Superintendence of Colombia must certify it for the modalities of i) microcredit and ii) consumer and ordinary credit. For this purpose, this entity has designed a mathematical formula, which is based on the financial and accounting information collected and contributed by each of the regulated credit establishments in active credit operations; weighting the individual annual effective interest rate of the disbursements made for each entity in the previous twelve weeks. Notwithstanding the foregoing, as indicated by the then Banking and Securities Superintendency, “the Law does not seek to establish a specific and binding procedure to which the controlled entity must submit to carry out the respective calculations”. This situation generates, in our opinion, legal uncertainty and requires the constant updating of weighting techniques used in the analysis of the respective operations, so that the resulting rates may reflect the dominant dynamics of the market but forgetting to certify interest rates that address the general economic reality in a rational manner and including informal financial market actors.