Experiences of Regulation and Supervision of Microfinance in Latin America and its Implications for China

Latin American Microfinance shows most important characteristics:committing to improve the financial services of microentrepreneurs in informal sectors,strong commercial orientation,and competition among various kinds of institutions.This paper summarizes the experiences of microfinance regulation and supervision in Latin America,and offers some proposals concerning Chinese microfinance regulation:Firstly,the credit -only institutions such as NGOs and Micro - Credit Companies should apply to non - prudential regulation,while the deposit - taking institutions deserve prudential regulation.Secondly,the regulations applicable to different kinds of institutions should be compatible to one another.Some tools such as the definition of non - performing loans,risk classification of loans,loan loss provisions,minimum capital and capital adequacy should be adapted to special risk structure of microfinance.Thirdly,the non - prudential regulations such as microfinance interest rate caps should be ameliorated.Finally,through favorable financial innovations,all kinds of microfinance institutions should access the low - income clients under commercial principles.