For 16 months, between 2018 and 2019, Bangolombia charged 19.95% interest on long-term home loans held by the bank to 1,742 customers, with a maximum rate of 12.54%, which is why Columbia’s Financial Supervisor (SFC) decided to penalize the company for 1,079 credits.

The financial supervisor found the collection of 1,079 home loans exceeding the legal rate defined by a reasonable estimate was more than 4%, but the total cases were 1,568 VIS credits and 174 VIS credits missing.

“In this sense, it is clear that the behavior criticized by the bank is evidence of substantial lending activities for home finance, which is contrary to the mandatory standards, which is why this SFC application leads to the respective restrictions.”

In May 2020, the SFC’s Deputy Supervisor for Financial Institutions issued an indictment and on that date Pancolombia “admitted that there were operational errors that led to the collection of interest without regard to legal limits.”

The Housing Portfolio Managing Tool, which issued the changes in July 2017, pointed out that when uploading information records on request, the circumstances in which high interest was allegedly charged were associated with manual errors; Functional errors when recording the new rate of duty.

Pancolombia undertook to contact the affected customers to get a refund according to the legal rate.