CD Rates in Ecuador: a Live Comparison

What a CD is in Ecuador

In Ecuador a CD goes by two names. At a bank it is a póliza a plazo fijo; at a cooperative it is a depósito a plazo. Same idea either way: you lock up a sum for a fixed number of days, and in return the institution pays you a set annual rate. Lock it for longer and you almost always earn a bit more.

The rates in the table are the APY, the annual percentage yield. That already folds in how often each institution compounds, so you can read straight down a column and compare like for like. A few Ecuadorian institutions quote a nominal rate instead of the effective one; the gap between the two is small, and we flag it where it matters.

We include a handful of US banks because plenty of expats still hold dollars up north and are weighing whether to bring the cash south. Ecuador runs on the US dollar, so there is no exchange-rate risk moving between the two. That makes it a genuine apples-to-apples call, which is exactly why it is worth laying side by side.

How to read the risk ratings

This is the part most rate lists leave out, and it is the part I would not skip. Every regulated bank and cooperative in Ecuador has to carry a calificación de riesgo, an independent risk rating, and publish it. The grade runs on a local letter scale from AAA at the top down to E at the bottom, with plus and minus steps along the way.

Roughly how to read the letters: AAA, AA and A are the strong tiers. BBB is still solid, just a notch down. BB and anything below it is where an analyst is flagging real concerns. So an AA+ is a very safe institution, and a BBB or a B is one you would want to look at harder before locking money away for a year.

Who decides the grade? Not the government. Independent rating firms do the analysis, names like PCR, BankWatch, Class, Global Ratings and Summa, and the regulator simply republishes what they find. That independence is the whole reason it is here: it is a neutral read on safety, not our opinion and not the institution's marketing.

One thing that trips people up. This is Ecuador's local scale, and it is not the same as the global Fitch or Moody's scale you might know from back home. On the global scale an Ecuadorian bank is capped by the country's own rating, so even the strongest local bank looks low. Compare local to local, and ignore anyone who mixes the two.

Sometimes two agencies rate the same institution and they disagree. We ran into exactly that with one cooperative: one firm had cut it to B while another still showed A. When the professionals split like that, you deserve to know, so we show the more cautious grade and note the other one right beside it. Better a slightly nervous number than a falsely calm one.

Now the pattern you will notice, and the reason any of this matters: in Ecuador the highest rates tend to come from the lower-rated institutions. That is not a trap, it is just risk and reward doing what they always do. A AAA bank pays you less because it is a safer home for your money; a co-op offering 8% is competing hard for deposits, sometimes because it needs to. That is not a reason to run. It is a reason to glance at the grade sitting next to the rate, decide how much risk sits well with you, and remember that COSEDE has your back up to the cap either way.

Last thing on ratings: that little arrow next to a grade. Up is a recent upgrade, down is a recent downgrade. A single letter is a snapshot; the direction is the story. A co-op sliding from AA to BBB over a year is telling you something a static grade never would.

What COSEDE actually covers

Every Ecuadorian bank, cooperative and mutualista in the table is covered by COSEDE, the national deposit-insurance fund. If an institution fails, COSEDE pays each depositor back up to a set limit, per person, per institution. US banks work the same way under the FDIC, at a much higher cap.

Here is the practical move, and if you take one thing from this page, make it this one. The COSEDE cap is per institution, so if you hold more than the limit at a single co-op, the amount above it is not insured. So split it. Two or three institutions, each under the cap, and the whole balance is covered. The calculator flags the year your balance would cross that line so you are not doing the math in your head. The current caps are on the record at cosede.gob.ec and fdic.gov; confirm them there before you rely on a number.

The tax angle a lot of people miss

This one is worth real money. In Ecuador, if an individual holds a term deposit for 180 days or more, the interest is exempt from income tax. Not reduced, exempt. Deposits shorter than 180 days get a 3% withholding taken at source, which is an advance you reconcile on your annual return, a rule in force since March 2026.

That quietly changes the comparison with a US CD, where the interest is taxed as ordinary income at your marginal rate. The calculator shows the after-tax figure on both sides, because a 5% Ecuadorian rate you keep in full can beat a higher US rate the taxman takes a bite out of. Check your own situation with your accountant, but do not overlook the exemption, because a lot of people do.

Where our numbers come from

Fair question to ask of any rate tool, so here is the whole chain, plainly:

• Advertised rates. Straight from each institution's published tarifario, the rate sheet it is legally required to post, cross-checked against the Central Bank and the two regulators (Superintendencia de Bancos for banks, SEPS for cooperatives).
• Ratings. From the rating agencies' own reports and the regulators' quarterly lists. When an agency has published a newer report than the regulator has gotten around to consolidating, we use the newer one, and we date every grade so you can see how current it is.
• The history chart and "rate paid". From the Banco Central del Ecuador, which records what institutions actually paid on deposits, month by month, back to 2008. That is a different thing from the advertised offer: advertised is what they are marketing today, the Central Bank figure is the average they truly paid. Both are useful, and we label which is which so you never mix them up.

Rates move, sometimes weekly, so the "rates as of" date tells you how fresh each one is. We do not take a referral fee from anyone on this list, we do not rank by who pays us, and nothing here is financial advice. It is a comparison tool. Before you actually open a deposit, confirm the number straight with the institution, because the one at the counter is the one that counts. And treat the published rate as a starting point, not a ceiling: institutions frequently pay above their posted rate when you ask, especially for larger deposits, so it is always worth naming your amount and negotiating. A couple of specifics worth knowing: Schwab and Fidelity are brokered CDs whose rates move daily, and Banco Guayaquil's app can pay more than the branch schedule we show.

How we pick the headline rate

The rate we lead with, in the stat band up top and as the default in both calculators, is the best one-year rate among institutions that are COSEDE-insured and carry a strong, current independent rating (AA- or better, rated within about the last year and a half). This is deliberate. The very highest advertised rates in Ecuador almost always come from small or lightly-rated cooperatives, so leading with the single biggest number would point you straight at the riskiest names. We would rather headline a rate you can actually lean on, and we still show the outright maximum right next to it, clearly flagged, so nothing is hidden. The full table above lists every rate high to low with each institution's safety rating beside it, so the final call is always yours.

About the CD Returns Calculator

A projection running 25 years on a one-year CD is an illustration, not a promise, and I would rather say that plainly than draw you a confident straight line. It assumes you keep renewing at today's rate, which will not hold, because rates rise and fall. That is what the shaded band is for: it shows a realistic range as rates move, instead of one fake-precise figure. Use it to get the shape of the thing, then treat the exact dollar as a ballpark.