From time to time, I like to look back at previous Risk Forum activities and see what payment topics we've covered and consider whether we should revisit any. In September 2012, the Risk Forum hosted the Symposium on 1073: Exploring the Final Remittance Transfer Rule and Path Forward. Seeing that almost five years have passed since that event, I decided I'd take another, deeper look to better understand some of the effects that Section 1073 of the Dodd-Frank Act has had on remittances since then. I wrote about some of my findings in a paper.
As a result of my deeper look, I found an industry that has been rife with change since the implementation of Section 1073 rules, from both a regulatory and technology perspective. Emerging companies have entered the landscape, new digital products have appeared, and several traditional financial institutions have exited the remittance industry. In the midst of this change, consumers' average cost to send remittances has declined.
Conversely, the cost to send remittances within the largest corridor, United States–Mexico, is rising. The rising cost is not attributable to the direct remittance fee paid to an agent or digital provider but rather to the exchange rate margin, which is the exchange rate markup applied to the consumer's remittance over the interbank exchange rate. As remittances become more digitalized and the role of in-person agents diminishes, I expect the exchange rate margin portion of the total cost of remittance to continue to grow.
Even though the average cost of sending remittances to Mexico is on the rise, I found that consumers have access to a number of low-cost options. The spread between the highest-cost remittance options and the lowest-cost options is significant.
With greater transparency than ever before in the remittance industry, consumers now have the ability to find and use low-cost remittance options across a wide variety of provider types and product options. To read more about the cost and availability of remittances from the United States to Mexico and beyond in a post-1073-rule world, you can find the paper here.
By Douglas A. King, payments risk expert in the Retail Payments Risk Forum at the Atlanta Fed