Adriana Arreaza and Carlos Giraldo

Latin America’s financial system has shown great strength throughout the pandemic, surprising several analysts, who perceived considerable risks suggesting that this real shock would result in financial shock. However, amid tightening global financial conditions, the outlook ahead is challenging.

Carlos Giraldo – Hoe Ee Khor and Rolf Strauch

Regions across the globe have been facing a double-shock as the pandemic triggered a demand shock and supply disruptions while economies were recovering.

María Alejandra Amado – Iader Giraldo

The 1990s saw the beginning of a significant expansion of Spanish banking in Latin America. Today, the strategic character of the region among the leading Spanish multinational banks is crucial, as is Spanish banking in the financial systems of the largest economies in Latin America.

Iader Giraldo and Philip Turner

Low long-term interest rates in the dollar after the Global Financial Crisis (GFC) and failings in the regulatory oversight of international bond markets have led investors to take more and more risk in their search for higher yields. Non-financial corporations (NFCs) in Latin America have taken full advantage of such favorable conditions. One indicator of this is that the international bond debt of Latin American non-banks has, measured against exports, more than doubled in the past decade

Carlos Giraldo and Iader Giraldo

The most significant health crisis of the last 100 years has had profound impacts throughout the different countries and regions of the world. Its effects have depended on the preconditions exhibited by the different territories, the force with which the pandemic occurred, and the responses of the economic and health authorities to counteract them.

Carlos Giraldo and Carlos Álvarez

As the world and particular regions continue to experience the effects of the pandemic and uncertainty about the containment of the pandemic persists, Latin America and the Caribbean require a robust financial safety net to support their sustained recovery over the coming years.

Iader Giraldo and Philip Turner

A decade of exceptionally low long-term interest rates, reinforced by renewed monetary policy easing in the advanced economies after the COVID-19 shock, has encouraged global investors to seek the higher yields offered by emerging market dollar bonds. And investors have been further enticed by the development of bond funds which offer the liquidity of a daily price even when the underlying securities are illiquid.