About

Like other Central Banks, Banco Central de Chile is tasked with ensuring the stability of the national currency as well as the financial system as a whole. Juan Pablo Araya originally joined in 2004 as a lawyer in the Office of the General Counsel, becoming senior lawyer in 2008, a position he maintained until 2012. During this first stint at the Banco Central de Chile, he gained significant credit for his supporting role in circumventing the effects of the global financial crisis when the Bank adopted several traditional and non-conventional monetary policy tools to safeguard the liquidity to financial institutions. As part of the legal department Araya provided analysis, reports and regulatory and contractual proposals to draft and implement the new tools required to successfully deal with such crisis. This was part of the Bank’s strategy of adopting and promoting ‘new standards in accordance with global recommendations from the BIS, IMF, FSB and other international forums, to prevent or mitigate the consequences of any other financial crisis in the future’. After a two year period as general counsel of the Chilean Association of Banks and Financial Institutions, Araya re-joined the Banco Central de Chile in 2014 as general counsel. Demonstrating the Bank’s confidence in his abilities, Araya has been known to step in for the CEO when he is absent. In his general counsel role he manages a team of 15 in the legal department, a team he helped build and reorganise to ‘inject fresh wisdom… and provide specialised counselling to the Board and staff in the various technical fields the Bank is responsible for’. Also during his current tenure, and with his legal team’s help, Araya played a crucial role advising and supporting the Bank’s Board and Financial Policy Division in preparing new financial regulations including the rules applicable to electronic payment means. Before his original move to Banco Central de Chile in 2004, Araya worked for two years in the legal department of the Chilean Superintendence of Securities and Insurance and played a crucial role in alleviating problems concerning a financial scandal in Chile known as the “Inverlink case”. His innovative problem-solving suggestion allowed clients of the soon to be bankrupt broker/custodian company (Inverlink Corredores de Bolsa) to enforce their rights, as the real owners of securities under custody, before the receiver divested its assets to pay off its creditors. Following his thorough and rigorous analysis ‘one of the most sensitive aspects was rapidly and satisfactorily solved’, says Araya.