Which Chilean neobanks are covered by the Fondo de Garantía de los Depósitos?

Only entities holding a full CMF banking licence under the Ley General de Bancos (DFL 3) sit inside the Fondo de Garantía de los Depósitos del Banco Central. In the digital-first cohort that means BancoEstado (and its MovilApp / CuentaRUT surface) and MACH — because MACH balances are booked at BCI under BCI’s full-bank licence, not at a separate prepaid-issuer entity. Tenpo operates as a CMF-licensed prepaid-card issuer under Ley 20.950 and is NOT covered. TAPP Caja Los Andes operates under the Caja de Compensación regime (SUSESO + CMF) and is also outside the bank Fondo de Garantía. Source: cmfchile.cl; bcentral.cl.

How does Chilean deposit insurance work and what does UF 200 mean?

The Fondo de Garantía de los Depósitos del Banco Central de Chile, established by Ley General de Bancos, covers eligible sight deposits at CMF-licensed banks 100% up to UF 200 per depositor per institution; time deposits carry a separate, lower-coverage tier that is calculated against the Fondo’s aggregate annual ceiling. UF (Unidad de Fomento) is an inflation-indexed unit of account published daily by the Banco Central de Chile — UF 200 typically translates to roughly CLP 7.6 million / USD 8,000–9,000 at recent values, but the peso and dollar figures move with the published UF rate. Verify the current UF value on bcentral.cl before relying on a fixed nominal figure.

Why are MACH balances insured but Tenpo balances are not?

The licence class on the receiving entity decides the protection — not the brand on the app. MACH is the digital surface of Banco de Crédito e Inversiones (BCI), a CMF-licensed commercial bank under Ley General de Bancos. A peso balance held in a MACH account is, in legal terms, a deposit at BCI and inherits BCI’s Fondo de Garantía membership at the UF 200 sight-deposit ceiling. Tenpo, by contrast, is a CMF-supervised prepaid-card issuer under Ley 20.950 (Tarjetas de Prepago, 2016) — the wallet balance is safeguarded in segregated custody at a partner bank but is NOT a deposit at Tenpo and is NOT inside the Fondo de Garantía. Read the licence on the receiving entity before assuming a balance is protected. Source: cmfchile.cl.

What changed when CMF replaced SBIF and SVS in Chile?

Ley 21.000 (2017) consolidated the Superintendencia de Bancos e Instituciones Financieras (SBIF) and the Superintendencia de Valores y Seguros (SVS) into a single Comisión para el Mercado Financiero (CMF). The CMF is now the unified supervisor for banks, securities, insurance, and the regulated fintech / payment-services perimeter (including Ley 20.950 prepaid-card issuers and the post-2023 Ley 21.521 fintech framework). For depositors the practical change is interface-level — the licence registers and the published rules now sit on cmfchile.cl rather than the legacy SBIF / SVS sites — but the underlying bank licensing and Fondo de Garantía mechanics are unchanged. Source: cmfchile.cl.

Tenpo vs MACH — which Chilean wallet is structurally safer?

For pure deposit-protection terms MACH is structurally safer: balances are booked at BCI under its full Ley General de Bancos licence and sit inside the Fondo de Garantía at the UF 200 sight-deposit ceiling. Tenpo balances are held under Ley 20.950 prepaid-card rules at custodian banks — segregation provides protection from the failure of Tenpo itself, but not statutory deposit insurance. That said, the practical distinction is bounded: the Chilean Fondo de Garantía ceiling at UF 200 is meaningful but small in dollar terms, and the structural risk a Chilean retail user is most exposed to is peso inflation and the published UF drift — not bank failure. The rational pattern is MACH or BancoEstado MovilApp for Fondo-de-Garantía-covered savings up to the UF ceiling, and Tenpo for the daily prepaid-card surface only when the convenience outweighs the loss of deposit cover. Source: cmfchile.cl; bcentral.cl.

LatAm / Chile · Updated 11 March 2026

Chile's neobanks,
by CMF licence class.

Chilean digital banking sits across two CMF-supervised licence classes plus a cooperativa layer. Full banks under the Ley General de Bancos (DFL 3) — BancoEstado MovilApp, and MACH booked inside BCI — carry Fondo de Garantía de los Depósitos del Banco Central cover at UF 200 on sight deposits, with a separate lower-coverage tier for time deposits. Ley 20.950 prepaid-card issuers (Tenpo) operate under custody-bank segregation but are NOT deposit-insured. Cajas de Compensación (TAPP Caja Los Andes) sit under SUSESO + CMF supervision and outside the bank Fondo de Garantía. UF — the Unidad de Fomento — inflation-indexes the headline ceiling daily; read the licence on the receiving entity before the marketing.

2Fondo de Garantía-covered surfaces

UF 200Sight-deposit ceiling per depositor

Ley 20.950Prepaid-card framework (2016)

Last verified11 March 2026

01 — The licence taxonomy

Two CMF licence classes,
plus a cooperativa layer.

The Chilean framework reads in three layers. Full banks under the Ley General de Bancos (DFL 3) are CMF-supervised and Fondo de Garantía-insured. Ley 20.950 prepaid-card issuers are CMF-supervised but NOT deposit-insured — segregation at custody banks protects funds from the failure of the issuer, not statutory cover. Cajas de Compensación run under the SUSESO regime with CMF financial-perimeter oversight, outside the bank Fondo de Garantía envelope. CMF — Comisión para el Mercado Financiero — has been the unified supervisor since Ley 21.000 (2017) merged SBIF and SVS into a single regulator.

BANK · CMF Ley General de Bancos (DFL 3)

BancoEstado MovilAppFondo de Garantía

MACH (booked at BCI)Fondo de Garantía

UF 200 ceiling on sight depositsInflation-indexed

PREPAID · Emisor de Tarjetas de Prepago (Ley 20.950)

TenpoCMF-supervised

NOT Fondo de GarantíaCustody-bank segregation

Wallet-class balancesSegregated, not insured

COOP · Caja de Compensación (CCAF)

TAPP Caja Los AndesSUSESO + CMF

Outside bank Fondo de GarantíaCCAF regime

Cooperativa reservesLimited cover

02 — The ranking

All 4, by licence + protection class.

BancoEstado MovilApp CMF banco bajo Ley General de Bancos (DFL 3) — state-owned

BANK Ley General de Bancos

Fondo de Garantía UF 200 on sight deposits

Fondo

MACH BCI digital surface — full-bank licence under Ley General de Bancos

BANK Ley General de Bancos

Fondo de Garantía UF 200 via BCI parent

Fondo

Tenpo CMF Emisor de Tarjetas de Prepago (Ley 20.950)

PREPAID Ley 20.950

NOT deposit-insured custody-bank segregation

—

TAPP Caja Los Andes Caja de Compensación de Asignación Familiar (CCAF) — SUSESO/CMF

COOP CCAF / SUSESO

Limited CCAF regime, not Fondo de Garantía

—

Deposit protection LATAM-BR

Scheme

FGC

Ceiling

R$250,000

Regulator

Banco Central do Brasil (BCB)

Fundo Garantidor de Créditos (FGC) protects up to R$250,000 per depositor per institution, with a R$1M aggregate cap across all FGC-member institutions over a 4-year window. Cover applies to full credit institutions (bancos múltiplos, comerciais, etc.) only. Brazilian fintechs licensed as IPMP (Instituições de Pagamento) are NOT FGC members — customer funds are segregated but not insured.

Primary source: https://www.fgc.org.br/

03 — Fondo de Garantía: who's covered, who isn't

Read the licence,
not the marketing.

The Fondo de Garantía de los Depósitos del Banco Central de Chile, established by the Ley General de Bancos (DFL 3), covers eligible sight deposits at CMF-licensed banks 100% up to UF 200 per depositor per institution. Time deposits sit in a separate, lower-coverage tier calculated against the Fondo's aggregate annual ceiling. Membership is statutory for CMF-licensed banks operating under Ley General de Bancos: BancoEstado is a Fondo member, and an eligible peso deposit at BancoEstado MovilApp (CuentaRUT) sits inside the same statutory envelope as a deposit at Banco de Chile, Santander Chile, or BCI.

UF — Unidad de Fomento — is the structural Chilean specificity. UF is an inflation-indexed unit of account published daily by the Banco Central de Chile and used widely across the Chilean financial system, including for deposit-insurance ceilings, mortgages, long-tenor savings, and rental contracts. UF 200 typically translates to roughly CLP 7.6 million / USD 8,000–9,000 at recent values, but the peso and dollar figures move with the published UF rate — verify the current value on bcentral.cl before relying on a fixed nominal figure. The headline ceiling is meaningful in real terms but smaller in nominal USD terms than FDIC ($250,000), FSCS (£85,000), or the EU DGS harmonised ceiling (€100,000). Depositors holding more than UF 200 in covered savings should split balances across multiple Fondo-member banks to layer cover.

Prepaid-card issuers are not deposit-insured. Tenpo operates under Ley 20.950 (Tarjetas de Prepago, 2016), which created a CMF-supervised perimeter for non-bank prepaid-card issuers. Customer funds are required to be safeguarded in segregated accounts at custodian banks — segregation protects funds from the failure of Tenpo itself, but it is not deposit insurance. Recovery in an issuer failure depends on the segregation arrangement and the custody bank, not on the Fondo de Garantía. The brand on the app is consumer-facing in the same way a bank's mobile surface is; the licence on the receiving entity is categorically different.

The MACH-via-BCI distinction is the single most important read on the page. MACH is operated as a digital-first product surface inside Banco de Crédito e Inversiones, a full Ley General de Bancos licensee. Balances are booked at BCI, not at a separate prepaid-issuer entity — so an eligible peso balance held in MACH inherits BCI's Fondo de Garantía membership at the UF 200 sight-deposit ceiling. Tenpo and MACH look similar at the app surface; the licence classes underneath them are not the same. Cajas de Compensación (TAPP Caja Los Andes) sit on a third surface entirely — under SUSESO supervision with CMF financial-perimeter oversight, outside the bank Fondo de Garantía envelope, with protection running through the cooperativa's reserves and the CCAF regime rather than statutory deposit insurance.

04 — Bank vs prepago vs cooperativa

Why MACH balances are covered and Tenpo's are not.

The everyday Chilean app experience makes MACH and Tenpo look like peers — both are mobile-first wallets with a Mastercard or Visa card, both target the same urban retail-banking demographic, both run a similar onboarding and KYC flow. The licence on the receiving entity is what divides them, and it determines whether a balance is deposit-insured or merely segregated.

MACH is the digital surface of BCI — Banco de Crédito e Inversiones — under its full Ley General de Bancos licence (DFL 3). Eligible peso balances are deposits at BCI in the legal sense, sit inside the BCI Fondo de Garantía membership, and are covered up to the UF 200 sight-deposit ceiling per depositor. The structure is identical to BancoEstado MovilApp (BancoEstado, full bank, CuentaRUT runs inside it) — both are bank apps, both inherit bank cover.

Tenpo is a CMF-supervised prepaid-card issuer under Ley 20.950, the 2016 framework that opened a non-bank perimeter for retail prepaid products. The Tenpo balance is not a deposit at Tenpo — it is a stored-value claim safeguarded in custodian-bank segregation, and the Fondo de Garantía does not apply. Tenpo announced a CMF banking-licence application track in 2023, which would, on grant and migration, move balances inside the bank Fondo de Garantía envelope. Until that licence is granted and the migration is executed, the protection chain is segregation at the custody bank, not deposit insurance. Cooperativas like TAPP Caja Los Andes run on a third licence again — CCAF under SUSESO with CMF financial oversight — outside both the bank Fondo de Garantía and the Ley 20.950 prepaid framework.

05 — Methodology

How this ranking is built.

Each candidate is scored on licence class (CMF Ley General de Bancos vs Ley 20.950 prepaid-card vs CCAF cooperativa), Fondo de Garantía membership status, the published UF 200 sight-deposit ceiling at the receiving entity, parent backing, and product surface (full-bank app vs prepaid wallet vs cooperativa-distributed digital account). The ranking is editorial and explicitly excludes affiliate compensation as a ranking input — none of the rows on this page carry an affiliate relationship at the time of writing. Licence-status references and Fondo de Garantía membership statements were verified against the CMF licensee register at cmfchile.cl, the published Banco Central de Chile UF series and Fondo de Garantía documentation at bcentral.cl, each operator's public deposit- and card-product page, and reporting from Reuters, La Tercera, El Mercurio, and Diario Financiero on the dates noted in data_as_of. Where regulatory perimeter is mid-shift (Tenpo's CMF banking-licence application track, post-Ley 21.521 fintech-rule implementation under CMF), the relevant editorial entry calls it out and points readers at the CMF primary source for current status. We do not reproduce CMF-confidential supervisory ratings.

06 — Verdict

For Fondo de Garantía-covered pesos, only the bank-licensed surfaces qualify.

For CLP-denominated peso savings where statutory deposit cover is load-bearing, the structurally clean picks in the cohort are BancoEstado MovilApp and MACH — both are bank-licensed surfaces under Ley General de Bancos (BancoEstado directly; MACH via its BCI parent), both inside the Fondo de Garantía envelope at the UF 200 sight-deposit ceiling per depositor per institution. Tenpo is the more polished Chilean prepaid-wallet experience and a useful daily card surface, but the Ley 20.950 licence carries no Fondo de Garantía cover — segregation protects against the issuer's failure, not against the loss of deposit-insurance status. TAPP Caja Los Andes sits on a different licence entirely and is useful for users already inside the Caja Los Andes membership ecosystem, not as a deposit-insurance pick. The rational pattern for a Chilean retail user is BancoEstado or MACH for Fondo-de-Garantía-covered savings up to the UF 200 ceiling, Tenpo for the daily prepaid-card surface where the convenience matters more than statutory cover, and a separate UF-denominated or USD-denominated long-savings instrument outside the wallet for amounts above the UF 200 ceiling. Splitting balances by use case — and by licence class — is how the structural mismatch between a small UF-indexed insurance ceiling and a large peso balance is managed at retail scale.