Costa Rica’s National Council of Financial System Supervision (Conassif) and financial regulator, SUGEF are working on a new bill that would provide universal deposit insurance for all banks in the country, following a recent recommendation by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD).

Currently, depositors in Costa Rica’s state-owned banks, such as Banco de Costa Rica (BCR) and Banco Nacional have their deposits guaranteed by the State, but no such equivalent exists for private banks operating in the country, such as Scotiabank and Citibank and scores of financial cooperatives and credit unions.

An earlier bill to create a deposit insurance system covering both State-owned and private banks was presented to lawmakers in June 2010, but failed to advance.

Costa Rica is amongst only a small handful of OECD countries and countries in the region that does not provide a system of universal deposit insurance for both State and private banks to protect depositors’ savings, the organization pointed out in a recent report.

In the same report, the OECD also urged Costa Rica regulators to make public the results of periodic tests of the country’s banks that measure their ability to cope with crisis, known as “stress tests.”

Currently, Costa Rica regulators do not disclose the results of bank “stress tests” to the public, arguing that current law prevents it and that the results of such tests could be “misinterpreted” by the general public.