As a foreign investor, it is important to define the best vehicle when investing in the Mexican lending market in order to make the legal structure of the project more efficient and maximize its profitability.
The most comprehensive entity for this type of venture is the SOFOM ENR, which allows the investor to participate in the credit granting market, leasing, credit card issuance, and even factoring, with the added benefit of being considered an integral part of the Mexican financial system, which provides important tax benefits and simplification of the collection process.
However, it should be considered that the incorporation and implementation process of the entity in practice usually takes 8 to 12 months (fully operational), which can be a significant limitation for projects sensitive to “time to market”.
An alternative for these projects is the SAPI, which only takes a maximum of 2 months to be fully operational and with which projects based solely on payday loans can be executed, for which it even has its own tax benefits.
In summary, the suggestion is not to decide between SAPI and SOFOM, but to start operations with the former while simultaneously starting the incorporation of the SOFOM to make the most of market timing.
María Galaviz
