10th Americas Deposit Insurance Forum
Opening Remarks by Alejandro Lopez, IADI Chair and President at the 10th Americas Forum
San Jose, 9 September 2026
Good morning, colleagues and friends.
Let me begin by thanking our hosts, the Deposit Guarantee Fund of Costa Rica, for welcoming us to San José. Hosting such a large family is a generous gesture, and we are grateful.
It is a special privilege to open this Forum. Ten years ago, in Buenos Aires, a group of us shared a conviction that, at the time, was more hope than certainty: that deposit insurers in the Americas needed a space of their own. Not a single position imposed on everyone, but a table where North America, Latin America and the Caribbean could sit together, compare how each of us actually carries out this work, and learn from one another. We believed the region would be stronger for having such a place to meet.
Ten editions later, I no longer need to make the case for that idea. You are the argument. The fact that we return, year after year, from every corner of this hemisphere proves that the idea was right.
So let me begin with gratitude: to those who built this Forum, to every host that has carried it forward, and to all of you who continue to return. This is your achievement.
But an anniversary should not only be an occasion to look back. It should also help us see how much the world around what we built has changed, and ask what we will need to protect over the next decade.
Over these ten years, the way millions of people relate to money has changed profoundly. New financial service providers have brought payments, transfers and ways to save within reach of people and businesses that previously faced barriers of distance, cost or complexity. In many of our countries, an account or wallet can be opened from a phone and used immediately. This has produced genuine advances in financial inclusion, and we should recognise them.
Innovation has made access easier. It has also raised users’ expectations. Today, we expect money to move at any time, without delay and with very little explanation. That experience is valuable. But it can also lead us to confuse two things that are not the same: access to a financial service and the security of the money behind it.
A fast, user-friendly interface can create a sense of confidence. Financial confidence, however, does not come from a good digital experience alone. It rests on a less visible architecture: prudential rules, capital and liquidity requirements, sound governance, effective supervision, resolution capacity, and protection mechanisms for when an institution can no longer meet its obligations.
Banks are not simply traditional providers that have yet to match the speed of new platforms. They perform a particular function. They take deposits, engage in maturity transformation, extend credit, and connect savings with economic activity. For that reason, they carry obligations that are often invisible on a screen but are essential to sustaining confidence.
The challenge arises when different products perform a very similar economic function for the user. A family receives its income, holds a balance and makes payments through an application. A business collects its sales proceeds and keeps there the working capital it needs to open again the following day. From its perspective, that balance is its money. Yet behind seemingly similar experiences there may be very different institutions, regulations and levels of protection.
This is not about holding back innovation or automatically imposing every banking rule on each new provider. It is about preventing products that perform equivalent functions from benefiting from the same appearance of security without assuming equivalent responsibilities. Innovation can widen the gateways into the financial system, but it cannot replace the foundations on which confidence rests.
This requires us to look again at the role of deposit insurance. Our work is not simply to have a fund available for the moment a bank fails. It is to make a public promise that must be understandable before a crisis and credible when a crisis occurs.
The first element of that promise is coverage. An appropriate level of coverage should fully protect the vast majority of depositors and preserve the money that families and businesses need for their day-to-day lives and operations. At the same time, it should set a clear limit that keeps a reasonable allocation of risk and does not turn protection into an unlimited guarantee.
We must also revisit some ideas that we repeat almost automatically. One is that greater protection necessarily weakens market discipline. That claim assumes depositors can identify and assess an institution’s risk. Yet not only households, but also the vast majority of small and medium-sized enterprises, businesses and service providers lack the information and sophistication needed to analyse a bank’s solvency and liquidity. Publicly available information is incomplete and disclosed with a lag; and even where it exists, interpreting it takes specialised expertise. Market discipline should therefore not be pursued by excluding entire categories of depositors, but by setting a reasonable coverage limit: high enough to protect the day-to-day economy, but not so broad as to eliminate all responsibility for amounts above that limit.
But determining what is covered, and up to what amount, is not enough. The promise must be known. Public awareness cannot be reduced to posting information on a website or periodically measuring whether people have heard of deposit insurance. We must ask whether a depositor understands, in simple terms, which institution protects their money, which products are covered, what the limit is, and what will happen if their bank ceases operations.
This clarity matters even more when the same application can offer different products, or when funds move from one institution to another without the user fully appreciating the legal consequences of that movement. The public cannot be expected to understand the complexity of the financial architecture. But it has a right to know when its money is protected and when it is not.
The challenge, then, is not to extend the guarantee automatically to every digital balance. It is to ensure transparency about the nature of the product, the provider’s responsibility, and the scope of protection. When something is not covered, we must say so as clearly as we communicate what we do protect. Confidence is also built by avoiding expectations the system will be unable to meet.
Protection, however, is not defined only by the amount covered. It is also defined by the time that elapses before depositors regain access to their money. Technology has radically transformed our perception of that time. In a world where a person can transfer funds and make payments instantly, it is increasingly difficult to explain that, after the failure of an institution, they must wait days or weeks to reach their deposits.
From the depositor’s perspective, the need for the guarantee arises at the very moment access is lost. There are therefore no longer any timeframes that can be considered reasonable in the abstract: every delay must be reduced to the minimum possible. Achieving reimbursement within three business days now appears to be one of the most important responses our systems can provide.
We should not confuse this aspiration with the idea that resolving an institution can be done as simply as an electronic transfer. Before reimbursement can take place, each depositor must be identified, their accounts aggregated, the coverage limit applied, special cases resolved, and a secure means of returning the funds established. Technology can accelerate these tasks, but it does not remove their complexity or the responsibility to perform them correctly.
Precisely for that reason, the three-day objective does not depend on the deposit insurer’s operational capacity alone. Reimbursement begins well before an institution is resolved or closed. It requires reliable and up-to-date depositor information, the capacity to verify data quality in advance, systems able to identify and calculate covered amounts, pre-established payout mechanisms, and periodic exercises showing that the entire process works.
Above all, it requires genuine integration among the members of the financial safety net. Each institution has different responsibilities, but none can act effectively if information arrives late or if coordination begins only once the crisis has become public.
The deposit insurer’s early access to relevant information does not mean encroaching on the responsibilities of other authorities. It means recognising that timely reimbursement requires preparation. Naturally, such access must respect confidentiality, data security and the legal responsibilities of each member of the safety net. But if the insurer receives the information for the first time only after the institution has ceased operations, the time needed to reimburse depositors will inevitably be longer.
There is therefore one simple idea I would like us to retain: rapid reimbursement does not begin on the day a bank closes. It begins much earlier, with information, preparation and coordination.
This task is especially relevant to our Forum. The Americas do not have a single institutional model. Our mandates, legal frameworks, markets and levels of development differ. That diversity is not an obstacle to learning; it is precisely why this space is so valuable. We can compare how we define coverage, how we explain its limits, how we access information, and how we organise reimbursement. We do not need uniformity in order to build better responses.
Over the next decade, our challenge will be to preserve confidence in a financial system that is increasingly diverse and harder for the public to understand. To do so, we must move forward in three directions. First, we must distinguish clearly: not every product that allows money to be stored and used offers the same security, and only those that meet the necessary conditions can responsibly be brought within the guarantee. Second, we must communicate clearly: everyone should know what is protected, up to what amount, and what falls outside coverage before a crisis occurs. Third, we must fulfil our promise: once a deposit is covered, the deposit insurer must be in a position to return it as quickly as possible. Defining coverage correctly, managing expectations appropriately, and preparing to reimburse depositors within three business days are all part of the same responsibility.
Ten years ago, we created this Forum because we understood that our differences did not prevent us from sharing a responsibility. Today, that responsibility is even greater. We must preserve a promise of protection that stays meaningful in an environment that is faster, more diverse and harder for the public to follow.
I believe we can do it. I believe it because of the people in this room, and because ten years of this Forum have shown what our region can build when it listens, compares experiences and works together.
Thank you very much, and welcome to the 10th Americas Deposit Insurance Forum.