A new amendment to the Law on Credit Unions (CU) dated November 5, 2009, will pass CU supervision to the Polish Financial Services Authority (PFSA), the body that regulates other financial institutions in Poland. Currently, CUs (also known as SKOKs by their Polish acronym) are regulated under...

The objective of this report is to present an assessment of the current legal, regulatory, and supervisory framework in Albania for microfinance, as well as an assessment of institutions rendering microfinance services (MFIs), including the Savings and Credit Associations (SCAs) and credit...

The reform of the Rural Credit Unions (RCUs) currently faces a number of major inter-related challenges. These must be resolved if China is to create a 'modern rural financial system'. The key issues facing policy-makers are: Consolidating independent shareholder ownership in order to realize...

The Little Data Book on Financial Inclusion 2012 is a pocket edition of the Global Financial Inclusion Index (Global Findex) database providing country-level indicators on the use of formal bank accounts, payments behavior, savings patterns, credit patterns, and insurance decisions. It provides...

"This paper examines the implications of bank activity and short-term funding strategies for bank risk and returns using an international sample of 1,334 banks in 101 countries leading up to the 2007 financial crisis. Expansion into non-interest income generating activities such as trading...

"This paper studies the factors banks perceive as drivers and obstacles to financing small and medium enterprises (SMEs), focusing on the role of competition and the institutional framework. Using a survey of banks in Argentina and Chile, the paper shows that, despite alleged differences in the...

"The authors (1) present new indicators of banking sector penetration across 99 countries based on a survey of bank regulatory authorities, (2) show that these indicators predict household and firm use of banking services, (3) explore the association between the outreach indicators and measures...

Understanding the industry structure of banking services in Brazil is an important task both for the financial community at large and for country specialists. The Brazilian financial system is the largest and most sophisticated in Latin America. This study is organized into five sections after...