Fresh off taking office in late July, President Keiko Fujimori made axing the 114% interest-rate limit one of her first tangible moves. The proposed change arrived last week within a package of bills that must clear congress, where her party holds the largest bloc but lacks a majority. Peru set the ceiling in 2021, and an attempt to remove it last year narrowly missed the votes. The central bank has been a vocal opponent of the ceiling, pressing for its repeal on the grounds that it shuts vulnerable borrowers out of the formal system.
Across the region, the rules are mixed. Colombia, Chile and Peru use caps. Brazil, Mexico and Argentina typically have no such limits, although courts in those countries may at times assess usury allegations.
Executives at Credicorp Ltd. have repeatedly called for removing interest-rate caps, which they say may sound protective but end up excluding the poorest borrowers and pushing them toward illegal lenders. Banking leaders add that the 114% annual ceiling reflects Peru's credit risk realities. The sector posted record profits last year.
Credicorp's BCP accounts for about one third of all loans in Peru, and four banks together hold 80% of lending agreements. Credicorp's largest shareholder is the Romero family, whose wealth spans businesses in banking, fishing, port operations and packaged foods. Additional billionaire families that stand to gain if the limits are removed include the Brescia family, a partial owner of BBVA's Peruvian arm, and the Rodriguez-Pastor family, which controls Intercorp Financial Services.
Peru's economy runs heavily outside the formal system, with roughly 70% of workers off payrolls. Credicorp has tapped into that informal activity through Yape, its mobile payments app that now dominates digital payments and has pulled many previously unbanked Peruvians into the formal fold, cutting back on cash. Yape counts 16 million users, about half the country.
Credicorp Chief Financial Officer Alejandro Perez-Reyes told an industry audience in 2025 that Yape's growth marries financial inclusion with new clients for the bank. He said the 114% cap prevented the company from offering credit to certain Yape users. According to him, Yape is able to issue microloans starting at 50 soles, or about $15, to be repaid in a month at around 10% interest per month. "So I loan you 50 soles and you repay me 55 soles, but if I annualize that interest rate I go way past the cap," he said. "But the person who asks for the 50 soles still needs the money and will go looking for it in the informal sector, with loan sharks, so I think it's better to offer a regulated, formal system."
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Credicorp's history with Fujimori complicates the optics. Between 2010 and 2011, then-chairman Dionisio Romero provided $3.65 million in cash from the bank's vaults to Fujimori's inaugural presidential bid without officially reporting it to the elections regulator. Prosecutors later uncovered the secret donation and after prosecutors exposed the undisclosed donation, they tried without success to bring money-laundering charges against Fujimori.
Romero, 61, stepped down as Credicorp's chairman in 2020 after the episode came to light. "I profoundly regret the impact that these actions had on our organization," he wrote to shareholders that year, adding they occurred in "a political context that represented grave danger for the future of Peru." He was succeeded by family member Luis Enrique Romero, who still chairs the company. According to his lawyer, Jose Ugaz, the donations were made in cash and complied with Credicorp's internal rules at the time. "What's clear is that Dionisio Romero did not commit a crime," he said. "In the worst-case scenario it was an administrative violation."
Credicorp says it has since tightened its political contributions policies. The company also said it did not ask the president to introduce the rate-cap bill and that there is no link between the old donation and today's proposal, noting that over 15 years separate the two. A representative for Fujimori declined to comment.
If congress scraps the cap, banks could scale up tiny, short-term loans to everyday users inside regulated channels, especially through apps like Yape that already reach half the country. Given BCP's outsize share of lending and the sector's record profits last year, any rule change would reverberate across a tightly held market. The next checkpoint is straightforward: watch how lawmakers handle the bill package submitted last week. The outcome will shape whether more Peruvians borrow formally or keep turning to the informal lenders everyone says they want to avoid.
