CFT Explained: Understanding Argentina's Total Financial Cost Rate

CFT (Costo Financiero Total) is Argentina's legally mandated measure of the total annualized cost of consumer credit, regulated by the Banco Central de la República Argentina (BCRA), folding interest, fees, and taxes into a single annualized percentage figure — Argentina's equivalent of TAE in Spain or CAT in Mexico.

What sets Argentina apart from every other market this site covers is persistent, often high, inflation, which the BCRA's benchmark interest rate is set to combat. Because lenders must price in expected inflation to protect the real value of what they lend, Argentina's CFT figures — for banks and fintech microlenders alike — track a national interest-rate environment that can be substantially higher than in Spain, Mexico, or Chile, independent of any single lender's pricing choices.

For a short-duration fintech microloan specifically, the CFT is annualized from a short effective rate exactly as TAE, CAT, CAE, and TCEA are calculated elsewhere on this site — but layered on top of Argentina's already-elevated benchmark rate environment, which mechanically pushes Argentine CFT figures higher in absolute terms than the equivalent figure for a comparable loan in a lower-inflation market.

The BCRA requires CFT to be disclosed clearly in advertising and pre-contractual documentation, and periodically adjusts its own reference rates, which can cause the CFT quoted by Argentine lenders to shift more frequently than the equivalent figure in more monetarily stable markets like Spain or Chile.

For an Argentine borrower, the most decision-relevant number remains the actual pesos repayable for the specific amount and term needed — particularly important in Argentina, where inflation can materially change the real value of a fixed peso repayment between the day a loan is taken and the day it is repaid, even over a short term.