Frauds to which your bonus may be exposed

Do you want to invest your bonus or part of it? Take care not to fall for scams and frauds because there are various “companies” that offer very attractive returns for your money but what they seek is to defraud you.

On these dates when thousands of people receive this labor benefit, some seek to use the Christmas bonus responsibly and one of them is to invest some part, if not all, but when carrying out this action, it is necessary to carefully review where and how to do it so that the result is successful and you do not end up losing your money.

There are supposedly financial companies that offer you attractive investment products, that give juicy profits in a short time, they are unregulated, false entities, that in some cases operate pyramidal models and that in the end will not give you what they promised, but not only that, they will not return your investment either.

That is why it is important that before depositing your bonus in an entity for investment, you investigate it, how it works, what are the average returns in the system and verify if it is a regulated financial institution.

This is important because being legally constituted as a financial institution, you will have the support of regulatory bodies, such as the National Banking and Securities Commission (CNBV) and user defense such as the Condusef in the event of any irregularity with the company where you are going to deposit the money.

The first thing to do is check the status of the financial institution in the Financial Services Providers Registration System (Sipres). This microsite that is found within the Condusef page contains data such as their company name, trade name, status, the sector in which they are located, the state where they operate or where they were registered, in addition to the deeds and the registration of the officials who work or represent them.

Gerardo Obregón, founder of Prestadero, a collective funding platform, stressed that it is important that if the bonus is planned to be invested in regulated entities, such as banks, fintech, sofipos, etc. In addition to Sipres, there is the Catalog of the Mexican Financial System, where you can find companies that are safe to invest.

For example, Smart Business Corp (SBC), a company that offers high returns for people to invest with them, is not registered within the Sipres, which indicates that it is not a regulated financial company and that if you face any problem with it, the Condusef won’t be able to support you.

SBC works like a pyramid scheme, where investors are commonly invited by others and have to pay a membership to be able to enter investments to the platform where very high profits are offered,

The Condusef has issued alerts against this company and others such as Xifra, so that people do not deposit their money in them in search of extraordinary profits, because it has detected irregularities in their operation, in addition to the fact that they are not constituted as financial companies.

Currently in Jalisco there are various complaints against Creso, a supposedly financial company that offered attractive returns well above the market and has now defrauded those who invested in it.

Where to invest safely?

To avoid this, before investing your money, review, compare and decide, the Condusef always recommends.

By reviewing you can make sure that the company where you deposit your money is legally constituted and if you face any problem the Law protects and defends you; secondly, it is important to compare so that you identify in which entity it is best for you to invest your money. Which gives better yields? How many installments? From what amount can you start investing?

Based on the information you have obtained, you can decide where to put your money.

Also when investing your bonus you must define an objective for that investment and in this way you will be able to know in what term you want to invest. Perhaps what you are looking for is to create your emergency fund and it is recommended to always have that money in sight investments, that is, that you can have immediate access to it or perhaps the savings/investment that you plan to use to pay for a vacation, accumulate for the down payment of a good and based on those goals you can define if you want to invest for six months, a year or two.

Check that the returns they give you are at or above inflation, in this way you will be protecting your money so that it does not lose value, but in this process, it is extremely important that you do not get carried away by the offer of miraculous gains.

Do not be greedy. “Avoid speculative investments, which give astronomical returns, which ensure that they will double your money, which are things that the market does not offer,” recommended Gerardo Obregón, founder of Prestadero.

Before investing, people should know that there are no guaranteed returns or investments, every operation of this type carries risks, he said.

For this reason, one option to mitigate any risk with investments is to diversify, “not to put all your eggs in the same basket”, as it is called in the financial system, to look for different tools.

yuridia.torres@eleconomista.mx