Trade in Financial Services: The Case of Chile
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be required when it came to a vote in the National Congress because of the law’s constitutional standing. It was feared that this requirement would make the agreement more difficult to pass. Therefore, Chile’s negotiating position was not only to prevent further liberalization beyond the status quo, but also to introduce exceptions regarding transfers and balance of payments.
Preparing for and Conducting the Negotiations: Informing the Private and Public Sectors In preparing for negotiations, the negotiation team’s coordination with other domestic actors was organized on two parallel tracks. The first track involved the allocation of responsibilities among agencies and the structure of the negotiating team. The second track was the establishment of a permanent dialogue with both the financial services supervisors and the private sector. In the first phase, this dialogue provided mainly general information on the content and the concepts in the negotiations. In the second phase, the emphasis focused on keeping the regulators and the private sector informed of the progress of the negotiations. This section describes how the preparatory work was organized, what the responsibilities of the different agencies were, and how the negotiating team was structured. The relationship with the stakeholders not present at the negotiating table—in particular, the private sector— is also presented. Finally, the relationship between the financial services negotiator and the lead negotiators is described. The Central Bank and separate superintendencies are responsible for regulating financial services in Chile, with the Ministry of Finance playing a policy-making role. The superintendencies are autonomous institutions that relate to the government through a ministry. The SBIF regulates banks and financial companies and the Superintendencia de Valores y Seguros (Superintendency of Securities and Insurance, or SVS) regulates, among others, stock corporations, securities issuers, securities brokers, stock brokers, stock and commodity markets, collective investment fund managers (except for pension funds), risk-rating agencies, insurance and reinsurance companies, insurance brokers, and claim settlement services providers. Their relationship with the government is through the Ministry of Finance. The Superintendencia de Pensiones (Superintendency of Pensions, or SP)23 regulates pension funds and is related to government through the Ministry of Labor. However, in the period from 2000 to 2006, the minister of finance headed the capital markets committee with