Financiera Confianza S.A.A.

What it is

Financiera Confianza traces its roots back roughly 30 years, formally beginning operations in May 2013 through the merger of Caja Rural de Ahorro y Crédito Nuestra Gente and the original Financiera Confianza — two institutions that had long served micro-entrepreneurs across Peru. It is supervised by Peru’s banking regulator, the SBS, and by the capital-markets regulator, the SMV.

At year-end 2024 it ran 114 branches spread across Lima and Peru’s centre, north, and south, plus 10 agency desks inside Banco de la Nación offices nationwide. Its core product is small loans to informal and semi-formal borrowers — street traders, smallholder farmers, and first-time credit users who would otherwise have no formal lender.

Who owns it

The controlling shareholder is Fundación BBVA para las Microfinanzas, a Spanish foundation, which held 96.38% of voting shares as at 31 December 2024. That leaves a free float of barely 3.6%, which explains why the stock trades very thinly on the BVL — this is effectively a foundation-owned institution that happens to be listed.

The Fundación Microfinanzas BBVA is the controlling shareholder and promotes sustainable, inclusive development for lower-income populations, operating today across five Latin American markets: Peru, Colombia, Chile, Panama, and the Dominican Republic.

Who runs it

The chief executive is Ana Cecilia Akamine Serpa (Gerente General), and the head of strategy and finance — the closest equivalent to a CFO — is Víctor Segundo Blas Campos (Gerente de División de Estrategia y Finanzas); both signed the 2024 Annual Report’s declaration of responsibility. The board is chaired by Ramón Feijóo López, who signed the chair’s letter in the same report.

The 2024 audited accounts were signed off by EY affiliate Tanaka, Valdivia & Asociados on 13 February 2025, giving a clean opinion.

The money, in plain words

In 2024, Confianza collected PEN 548.6M (~USD 161M) in interest and fee income; after paying PEN 127.1 (US$37)M in its own funding costs, it produced a gross financial margin of PEN 421.5 (US$124)M. Running costs of PEN 254.9 (US$75)M and loan-loss provisions of PEN 151.1 (US$44)M then compressed the operating result sharply, leaving a pre-tax profit of only PEN 16.9M (~USD 5.0M).

After income tax of PEN 4.2 (US$1)M, the bottom line — net profit — was PEN 12.7M (~USD 3.7M), a net profit margin of 2.3% (our calculation). This result slightly exceeded the 2023 net profit, but only just.

For context, the return on equity was 3.0% (our calculation) — thin by any standard, reflecting a year still heavy with loan-loss charges inherited from Peru’s social disruptions and weather events.

The capital buffer remains solid: Confianza reported a capital ratio of 18.1%, well above regulatory minimums, and held comfortable liquidity through year-end. Total assets stood at PEN 2,683M (~USD 789M), the bulk being its loan book.

What it is doing now

Credit-rating agencies maintained their A- institutional rating and the top CP-1(pe) short-term rating; in parallel, Confianza made new issuances of negotiable deposit certificates in the domestic capital market. The most striking recent development is the 2025 earnings turnaround: the 2025 audited accounts show net profit leaping to PEN 52.4M (~USD 15.4M), a fourfold jump, as provisioning requirements eased sharply and the loan book grew.

By end-2025 the branch network had expanded to 117 agencies plus the same 10 Banco de la Nación correspondents. Management is also digitising its client-facing processes, having integrated biometric authentication, pre-approved mobile credit disbursements, and the PLIN instant-transfer wallet into its app.

What to watch

• Loan quality normalisation. In 2024, half of Peru’s microfinance entities operated in the red, with non-performing loan ratios above 8%. Confianza stayed profitable, but the size of that improvement in 2025 will test whether recovery is durable.
• Owner intentions. With only 3.6% of shares freely traded, the Fundación’s long-term plans for the listed entity — whether to delist, recapitalise, or expand — are the single biggest unknown for any outside investor.
• Return on equity. At 3.0% in 2024 (our calculation), returns lag the cost of capital; the 2025 jump to roughly 12% looks more acceptable, but investors will want confirmation that provisioning costs stay low as the credit cycle matures.
• Peru macro risk. Peru led Latin American growth at 3.2% in 2024, a tailwind for micro-borrowers. Any political disruption — a recurring Peruvian risk — feeds directly into Confianza’s loan performance, given its borrowers’ fragility.

This is news, not investment advice.