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An Overview of Future Developments
Garantee Societies aim at strengthening their partnership with SMEs and the credit providers through enhanced mutual understanding
The segmentation of their activities will emphasise start-ups, take over, the emergence of the social economy or the coverage of venture capital operations.
The Garantee Societies want to enlarge the scope of their services to SMEs : business advice, financial assistance for better credit and consultancy terms.
They try to improve their positioning in the field of regulatory and prudential rules.
The burden of the European competition rules (Art 87 and 88 of the Treaty) should be reduced for small companies. The point of view of the AECM is that a special framework should exist to ease the application of these rules for SMEs.
The Basle Committee and the EC made proposals concerning the solvency requirements. Garantee Societies want to use their strong solvency as a favourable weighting of the SMEs portfolios for the benefit of the Bank's R.A.R. ; the new capital requirement rules should not jeopardise access to finance or increase financial costs or discriminate between SMEs and large companies.
Reinsurance of Garantee Societies guarantee commitments is a central point for increasing their own funds through the European Investment Fund counter-guarantees or re-insurance packages.
The concept of Mutual Guarantees is being disseminated to new countries and emerging economies. Fruitful contacts are taking place with a number of potential candidate countries in order to spread the concept and to fulfil the consultancy and training programs.
The economic role and philosophy of Mutual Guarantee actions should be better known by the European Authorities. Improved information at this level can in turn lead to effective actions to the benefit of Mutual Guarantee Societies and SMEs, their partners.
At each moment, Mutual Guarantee Societies demonstrate that they have a distinctly malleable and modular formula that is capable of meeting new market requirements.
AECM is extremely grateful to the European Commission, Enterprise DG for the assistance provided to its activity.
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