Chile's capital markets are among the strongest in Latin America, and they can expand to accommodate, with greater flexibility, the infrastructure financing that lies ahead. The energy transition, mining projects, port modernization, real estate — each requires capital at tenors and from investor bases that the local market may struggle to supply consistently. Pension funds remain the dominant institutional buyer; the corporate bond market is comparatively narrow; international capital is within reach, but the path to it is slow.
Additional financing mechanisms exist, and the instrument closing gaps of this kind in other markets is tokenization. This is not a crypto-trading phenomenon. It is a legal-technical method for representing rights — debt, equity, project cash flows — on regulated digital infrastructure. The instrument remains a security under applicable law. What changes is how it is issued, held, transferred and settled: directly on an electronic register, with less intermediation, a faster lifecycle and broader investor access. None of this is speculative. It has been advancing steadily for several years, from pilot to production.
Switzerland Has Reached Production
Switzerland is where it has reached the production stage. The Distributed Ledger Technology (DLT) Act of August 2021 introduced Article 973d into the Swiss Code of Obligations, giving ledger-based securities full legal status. The Swiss Financial Market Supervisory Authority (FINMA) licenses the platforms that issue and clear them. SIX Swiss Exchange integrated its digital exchange, SDX, into the main exchange and the central securities depository in October 2025. The World Bank, UBS and Commerzbank have issued on it. The Swiss National Bank, through Project Helvetia III, settles tokenized bonds in wholesale central bank money. More than CHF 2 billion has been issued. The infrastructure is no longer experimental.
Nothing in this architecture requires the issuer to be Swiss.— Dr. Verónica Pollak, C² Multiplier
What This Means for Chilean Issuers
The relevant fact for Chile is that nothing in this architecture requires the issuer to be Swiss. A Chilean mining company, a transmission concession or a real-estate vehicle can issue tokenized instruments through Swiss infrastructure today. The double taxation agreement between Switzerland and Chile, in force since 2011, provides a stable cross-border tax framework for the resulting cash flows. The investor base on the Swiss platform is international. For specific issuers — in particular, project-finance vehicles seeking diversified institutional capital at longer tenors — this is a useful tool in the meantime.
SRT® — Swiss Royalty Token. A structured service for tokenizing royalty and streaming rights under Swiss law, admitted to a regulated trading venue or privately placed.
Explore SRTA Model, Not a Template
This does not mean Chile should outsource its capital markets. Quite the opposite. The Swiss regime is a working model, and Chile is well positioned to build its own. The 2023 Fintech Law (Law No. 21,521) created the legal framework for new categories of financial service providers, and the Financial Market Commission (CMF) has been issuing implementing rules ever since. The next step — formal recognition of digital financial instruments in Chilean civil law, with a corresponding authorization regime for digital-asset custodians — is within manageable distance of what already exists. The Swiss text is not a model to be copied; it is evidence that the engineering can be done.
Chile has historically led Latin America in modernizing financial infrastructure. The AFP pension system, the early consolidation of custody in the Central Securities Depository (DCV), the institutional maturity of the CMF — all of this placed Chile, for decades, ahead of its regional peers. Argentina has become a regional pioneer in the tokenization of real-world assets (RWA) through a regulatory framework driven by its National Securities Commission (CNV). Brazil, Colombia and Mexico are actively studying tokenization right now. Whoever moves first will set the regional benchmark and attract the first issuance flows. Chile has the institutional habits to do it, and a head start.
CMF's regulatory work should continue on its current course. Chilean banks and fund managers should engage with Swiss infrastructure as a learning ground — taking part in real transactions, not consultative visits. A focused public-private dialogue with FINMA and SDX, built on the Chilean-Swiss institutional channels that already exist, would accelerate the transfer of technical know-how that the next legislative step will require.
The Question of Timing
Switzerland has grown in financial services by building precise, well-designed regulatory regimes that international users want to access. Chile has an opportunity; the question is whether it will seize it before its regional peers.
This column was first published in Spanish in El Mercurio on 30 July 2026 under the title "Los mercados de capitales chilenos necesitan un próximo paso, Suiza ya lo construyó". English translation by C² Multiplier.