SAR, with lower risk of money laundering operations

Alejandro Alegría

La Jornada Newspaper, Sunday, August 3, 2025, p. 19

The risk of money laundering in the retirement savings system (SAR) is lower than in the rest of the financial sector, said Guillermo Zamarripa, executive president of the Mexican Association of Retirement Fund Administrators (Amafore).

According to the Ministry of Finance and Public Credit (SHCP), new regulations will be introduced in the coming weeks to protect the SAR from illegal transactions, as recommended by the Financial Action Task Force (FATF).

In an interview, the head of Amafore commented that both the authorities and the 10 administrators have been working for several months to update the rules regarding the prevention of money laundering (AML), so it is not related to what happened with the three banks that were accused by the U.S. government at the end of June.

He emphasized that the risk of such illicit activities within the SAR is low, as most of the resources are social security payments made by companies. However, he said that some cases may arise in voluntary savings, but only when the amounts are very high.

According to the National Financial Inclusion Survey, only 8 percent of people save voluntarily, so it's in this small segment where there's a risk of unusual activity. "We need to check who's doing it, but it's a very limited activity ," Zamarripa noted after highlighting the survey data.

He considered this update to the SAR rules to be important because they are already outdated. A large part of the mandatory savings operation is low risk. The risk is lower than in other sectors of the financial system , he noted.

Separately, Julio César Cervantes Parra, president of the National Commission for the Retirement Savings System (Consar), commented in an interview that this regulation, which will be issued by the SHCP, is being reviewed by all the actors involved in order to have better control of money laundering, as in the entire financial sector .

What's important to remember is that the SAR is much less exposed, because practically all of the revenue is collected through business contributions from Social Security , he said. He added that the regulation that will be issued simply complements the controls we already have .

He also noted that the system has electronic files, which contain fingerprints, photographs of workers, and their complete history, making it the safest sector in terms of money laundering .

This regulation is simply being strengthened solely to have the necessary standard , he indicated.