The Central Bank facilitates the possibility of changing banks to promote competence

On August 11th The Central Bank of Argentina's Board of Directors established a series of changes in bank accounts regulations aimed at facilitating customer migration between financial institutions as a way to promote and speed up the system operation.

Among other measures, the Central Bank determined that salary accounts may be opened upon workers ‘request and not exclusively upon employer´s request, as it happened till now. Thereby, the worker may request to his employer to deposit his salary at a financial institution of his choice. Moreover, the regulation makes clear that in some special labor regimes, such as domestic employment and farm work, the salary account may be used as a remuneration payment mechanism.

In addition, as from November 1st banks shall allow their clients to open and close bank accounts through home banking and they may also offer other channels such as telephone banking, e-mail or ATM. In the same way, clients may cancel banking or non-banking credit cards, without visiting a bank branch.

Moreover, the regulation established that time deposits certificates issued in paper may be compensated between institutions. Therefore, a time deposit certificate from a bank, upon maturity the client may deposit such certificate in an account of his ownership in other bank.

The implementation of this regulation shall boost the development of an open financial system with better options for users, being the aforementioned one of the main management axis of the Central Bank.

August 12th, 2016