Banco Central de Cuba

The Banco Central de Cuba (BCC) stepped into an expanded regulatory role when Cuba's National Assembly passed 176 economic reform measures on 18 June 2026, designating it the supervisory authority over a newly authorised private corporate banking sector on the same terms as state banks . The reform simultaneously licenses private non-bank lenders for microcredit, private exchange houses, and last-mile remittance payment agents, all of which fall under BCC's regulatory perimeter.

Established in 1997 when Cuba separated its central bank functions from the Banco Nacional de Cuba, the BCC has since operated in an economy where the state and its military conglomerate GAESA controlled the bulk of hard-currency flows. Its monetary toolkit has been constrained by the island's dual-currency legacy: the MLC digital channel and the peso have run parallel at ever-widening spreads, with the informal exchange rate reaching 670 pesos per dollar by mid-June 2026 against an official rate of 555. The 2021 Tarea Ordenamiento currency unification, which the BCC administered, triggered inflation of several hundred percent within months as the informal market outpaced the managed rate.

The BCC's new supervisory brief is substantial but untested. It must licence and oversee private banks with no prior regulatory precedent on the island, and the financial sector it is opening sits atop a foundation compromised by US sanctions: GAESA, which controls roughly 60% of Cuba's hard-currency revenue, is on the US Specially Designated Nationals list, meaning any private channel touching GAESA infrastructure inherits secondary-sanctions exposure. Whether the BCC can certify credible GAESA separation to attract international correspondent banks is the operational question the reform leaves open On 23 June 2026 OFAC sharpened that question by designating Banco Financiero Internacional (BFI), the state bank that clears the bulk of Cuba's foreign-currency transactions, under Executive Order 14404 , removing the one correspondent route any private bank licensed under the reform would have used .