Peru: Currency & Financial System

Peru's currency is the sol, introduced in 1991 at a rate of one sol to one million intis to end the hyperinflation that had devastated the earlier Peruvian inti. The currency was officially called the nuevo sol until 2015, when Peru's Congress renamed it simply the sol. Issued by the Central Reserve Bank of Peru (Banco Central de Reserva del Peru, or BCRP) and divided into 100 centimos, the sol has maintained comparatively low and stable inflation relative to many of its regional peers since the currency stabilization of the 1990s.

The BCRP has followed an explicit inflation-targeting framework since 2002, aiming to keep annual inflation within a band of 1 to 3 percent, and the sol trades under a managed float in which the central bank intervenes mainly to smooth short-term volatility rather than to defend a fixed rate. As of October 2026, the BCRP had held its reference interest rate at 4.25 percent across its monetary policy meetings since mid-2026, a position it reaffirmed in its October 2026 monetary policy statement.

Peru's banking sector is supervised by the Superintendencia de Banca, Seguros y AFP (SBS), the agency responsible for regulating banks, insurers, and private pension fund administrators. The sector is dominated by a small number of large private banks and has undergone substantial de-dollarization since the early 2000s, encouraged by central bank reserve requirements on foreign-currency deposits, though US dollars still account for a meaningful share of loans and deposits. As of 2026, Peru's financial system is widely regarded by regional observers as one of the more stable in Latin America, underpinned by consistent macroeconomic policy and sizable international reserves.