What a fideicomiso is in Mexican lender financing, and the advance it carries

A fideicomiso is a Mexican trust. A lender assigns its loans to a bank trustee, borrowers pay into the trust, and the fund that financed them is paid first. The advance is set as aforo, collateral over debt. Four deals with published aforo required 1.27x to 1.30x, an advance near 77% to 79%; an unrated private line advanced 87.5%.

A fideicomiso takes the loans out of the lender's hands and gives them to a trustee

The rule is the Ley General de Títulos y Operaciones de Crédito. Under its article 381 the settlor, the fideicomitente, «transmite a una institución fiduciaria la propiedad o la titularidad» of assets or rights, to be used for a lawful and stated purpose. Article 385 allows only institutions expressly authorised by law to act as trustee, and article 395 lists who may hold a trust whose purpose is to guarantee an obligation: banks, insurers, bonding companies, brokerage houses, SOFOMs registered with the financial consumer agency CONDUSEF, and general deposit warehouses.

In a lender financing the parties take three seats. The lender is the fideicomitente and assigns its loans to the trust; in Findep's 2014 supplement the loans pass «libres de todo gravamen y limitación de dominio», free of any lien. A bank is the fiduciario: Banco Invex in the trusts behind Findep's 2014 notes and Credijusto's Goldman Sachs line, Banco Multiva and Banco Monex in the two credit lines HR Ratings rated in 2025 and 2026. The fund or the noteholders are the fideicomisario en primer lugar, paid first from collections; the lender is the fideicomisario en segundo lugar and receives what is left. In the Credijusto line described in Covalto's SEC filing the trust itself is the legal borrower, and the loans are «non-recourse to Covalto as they are secured by loans pledged to the trust (fideicomiso), for which we receive an advance rate».

Aforo is the advance rate turned upside down, and Mexican documents state it that way

A US facility says how much it lends against each dollar of eligible loans: an advance rate of 80%. A Mexican trust says how much collateral must stand behind each peso of debt: an aforo of 1.25x. The two are the same number inverted, advance rate equals one divided by aforo. HR Ratings' report on line CIB/3489 defines it as «el Valor Nominal de los Derechos al Cobro cedidos» backed by loans, plus the present value of the assigned leases, divided by the outstanding balance of the line less the cash in the trust.

The documents use up to three levels. A required aforo, which must hold for surplus cash to return to the lender: 1.30x in the CIB/3489 line rated by HR Ratings, 1.28x in Findep's FIDEPCB 14 notes on the Bolsa Mexicana, 1.27x in ENGENCB 26. A minimum aforo, the floor: 1.25x in CIB/3489, 1.20x in the Exitus programme. And the consequence of the floor: in Findep's notes, aforo below the required level on two payment dates running is an early amortisation event, after which collections go to repay the notes rather than to the lender.

Late loans leave the numerator, so delinquency shrinks the advance on its own

Only eligible loans count toward aforo. Findep's eligibility criteria in the supplement registered with the CNBV, eighteen of them, admitted no loan more than 60 days past due at transfer, no single loan above 1% of the pool and no state above 12%, except Mexico City and the State of Mexico together at up to 30%; a loan more than 60 days late counted as defaulted. Line CIB/3489 caps any one client at 5% of the trust and the five largest at 25%, and a rated master servicer reviews the loan files against those criteria.

The effect is mechanical. A loan that crosses the eligibility line leaves the collateral but not the debt, so aforo falls without anyone drawing more. A lender whose book is deteriorating watches its borrowing base, the amount it may draw against eligible loans, shrink month by month, and below the floor the trust keeps the cash. Rated deals carry more margin than the floor: HR Ratings reported aforo of 1.36x on CIB/3489 from June 2025 to February 2026, against a required 1.30x.

A fund prices the advance from the loan tape, and the typical number is a range, not a rule

No law or regulator fixes the advance. The five deals above span 76.9% to 87.5%, and the same private borrower got 65% from Credit Suisse on its lease book while Goldman Sachs advanced 87.5% on its loans; Covalto's SEC filing shows that line moving from 82.5% at the end of 2020 to 87.5% a year later. The collateral class, the counterparty and the presence of an independent master servicer move the number more than the trust does. The wider set of structures is mapped in Mexico cannot count its own lenders, and what happened to the trusts of lenders that later failed in The eleven dark months.

Before agreeing on an aforo, a fund runs the proposed eligibility criteria over the loan tape, the file with one row per loan, to see how much of the book qualifies, and reads the static pool to see how fast eligible loans become ineligible. The advance it offers follows from those two readings, and the same data, refreshed monthly, is what the trust uses to test aforo afterwards.

Effect is not a bank, a lender, a broker-dealer, an investment adviser or a credit rating agency. Nothing here is investment, legal, accounting or tax advice. Every term carries the date of the document it was read from, read on 8 October 2026.