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Despite a broad recognition that increased access to financial services can bring significant benefits to the poor, catalyzing economic development, financial inclusion in emerging markets and developing economies continues to lag far behind expectations.
Responding to the latest assessment of Mexico’s implementation of the Basel III recommendations, the Mexican authorities argued that regulations for countries hosting foreign banks’ subsidiaries and for the parent countries of the subsidiaries should be aligned “in order to prevent distortions due to the asymmetric treatment of similar risk exposures by home and host jurisdictions,” which could result in an unlevel playing field between foreign subsidiaries and domestic banks.
Just as Basel III, among other factors, played a role in the decline in the volume of cross-border lending from advanced economies to EMDEs, it created incentives for a shift in the composition of these flows. Banks’ exposures to certain business lines have been affected, including those that are crucial for development like trade finance and infrastructure finance (the latter will be the subject of a future blog).
Basel III is the most extensive, post-global crisis financial regulatory standard to date, but it is rarely discussed by development economists. This is a major oversight.
Many factors could be cited for the low ratios of financial inclusion in Latin America, but in a recent paper we focus on the potential role of financial regulation. We assessed and compared the quality of the policies and regulations that impinge on financial inclusion in eight Latin American countries.
The difficulties encountered by emerging markets’ regulators in balancing socially desirable innovations and possible risks are accountable for the slow development of fintech regulations in these economies. To address these problems, the framework developed in CGD’s report, Financial Regulations for Improving Financial Inclusion can support regulators’ efforts. This approach, based on three main principles, encourages the private sector to successfully adopt and adapt digital finance solutions for low-income populations while circumventing risks.
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