Microfinance Bank Implosion Victims Lack Answers From Government on Missing Savings

ByMexico Solidarity

This article by Julio Gutiérrez appeared in the July 17, 2025 edition of La Jornada, Mexico’s premier left wing daily newspaper.

[Editor’s note: Mexico has a category of sub-banks named SOFIPOs (Popular Finance Societies). These institutions are governed by the National Banking and Securities Commission (CNBV), which is supposed to protect customer deposits and ensure the bank is solvent and an honest steward of the finances that they administer. SOFIPO “banks” are ostensibly chartered to offer savings plans and loans to clients, primarily poorer and working class clients who are not served by the larger banks, but like so many of the other private institutions which sprung up during the worldwide “microfinance” trend, they are beset by accusations of loan-sharking, disappearing funds and poor oversight.]

In April, the bomb exploded: the popular financial institution CAME disappeared from the authorities’ radar, leaving more than 1.3 million people without access to their savings. In June, the National Banking and Securities Commission (CNBV) announced it was intervening in the financial institution.

Five months have passed since then, and those affected by the Popular Financial Society (Sofipo) have received no response from the authorities. Desperate for resources, they have had to sell part of their assets and have turned to various authorities to resolve their biggest question: “Where is my money?”

But the responses aren’t always the most encouraging, Lizbeth Morales Rohde, one of the affected savers who has been present at all the protests held before various authorities, told this newspaper. An official from the Ministry of the Interior “offered me a cake when I told him I have to keep paying the bills: they keep coming.”

At this point, rather than answers, what they’ve received is “high-level gossip about whether this person did it or that person,” say Morales Rohde and Edna Ávila, but they still don’t have anything concrete.

The situation with the SOFIPO, which is under intervention, is also not encouraging, as data from the Atlanta Pacific Federation, an auxiliary body of the CNBV responsible for supervising 10 of the 34 popular financial institutions operating in Mexico, including CAME, reported that all its financial risks exceed its own capital by 170 times.

Communications remain cut off, the institution’s website is unavailable, and the Financial Service Providers Registration System, administered by the National Commission for the Protection and Defense of Financial Services Users (Condusef), displays the following message:

“This financial institution failed to comply with its obligation to validate its corporate and location information for the seventh month of 2025, within the five-business-day period of August 2025, pursuant to Article 50 of the Provision on Records before Condusef.”

CAME hasn’t reported its financial statements to the authorities since January. In April, the institution, with over 30 years of experience in the popular credit and savings market, blocked its users’ access to their funds. When users called its offices, they received a pre-recorded message informing them that shareholders were working to resolve the situation.

According to the latest information released by the CNBV, at the end of last year there were 1,371,262 savers, and funds deposited by the public totaled 1.6 billion pesos.

Following several marches and sit-ins by clients in various locations in the nation’s capital, in May, the SOFIPO posted a message on its website stating that savers would recover all or part of their funds with funds from bankruptcy protection insurance for this type of intermediary.

On Friday, July 13, the CNBV released a statement announcing that it had intervened in CAME “after assessing a series of elements that indicate accounting irregularities that jeopardize the interests of savers.” The process could take up to six months.

CAME clients at a blockade on Insurgentes Avenue South this past May. Photo by Alfredo Domínguez

Public Uncertainty

“Today we feel that the authorities, far from helping, are putting obstacles in the way of resolving this… We’ve gone to every possible agency, but we have none left. Now we wonder where to go or who can help us; everyone answers and says they’re working, but when we turn around, nothing happens.”

“A few weeks ago we were at the Ministry of the Interior, and the rhetoric is the same. Pablo Coballasi (owner of PC Capital, who together with Creation Investments created Te Creemos Holding, the holding company of CAME) was there, and it’s still the same: it wasn’t me, it was someone else,” says Morales Rohde.

“There’s no solution; we just hear high-level gossip and that’s it. I have no money, very little savings, and I had to sell my car. I feel like the authorities are doing nothing; we have no updates on the case. Nothing’s happening here, it’s frustrating as a human being; there’s little hope of getting my money back,” he lamented.

Edna Ávila, also in an interview, points out that everyday life is difficult, “but what they want is to tire us out and make us stop fighting for our resources. But that won’t happen. Every time I go out to the protests, I promise my father, who is elderly, that I’ll return with his money.”

“We go one way, we go the other; today we understand that this was fraud, but no one does anything. The CNBV tells us it can’t give us information because we’re human beings and it’s not our business, and that’s literal,” Ávila says.

One opportunity they haven’t reached, and now see as their best option, is to be heard by President Claudia Sheinbaum. “What we’re seeking is an audience with her; we ask her to listen to us every day, we send letters, but we haven’t been able to achieve it.”

Everything indicates that as the months go by, the case will continue to escalate, as day after day, savers who only recently learned they had no access to their funds turn to those who have already spoken out for solutions.