OREANDA-NEWS. December 01, 2014. The Head of FAS Department for Control over Financial Markets, Olga Sergeeva, took part in the XIII National Conference on Micro-Financing and Finance Availability – “Market Establishing and Evolution under Mega-Regulation. Challenges and Opportunities for Consumer Credit Cooperatives and Microfinance Organizations”, organized by the National Partnership of Microfinance Market Participants (NAUMIR) and Russian Microfinance Centre (RMC) in St Petersburg.

The main items on the agenda were, in particular, the results of transformations in the structure of the Bank of Russia; the changes in the system of regulation and control over the microfinance market; performance specifics of microfinance organizations (MFO) and consumer credit cooperatives (CCC) under the conditions of establishing a mega-regulator; an increased role of self-regulated organizations in the present conditions of microfinance market performance; and enhancing efficiency of the measures to achieve sustainability of MFO and CCC.

Attendees included representatives of the State Duma of the Federal Assembly of the Russian Federation, the Federation Council of the Federal Assembly of the Russian Federation, the Bank of Russia, other ministries and government agencies, as well as the leading analysts of the financial market and top-managers of banks and companies.

At the plenary session Olga Sergeeva made a presentation “How to Maintain Specifics of Regulating Microfinance Organizations and Credit Cooperatives under the Conditions of Unifying Requirements to the Participants of the Financial Market”. In particular, she outlined some aspects of normative legal regulation of MFO and CCC, as well as the principles of interaction between FAS and the Bank of Russia.

She also gave statistical data on investigations of the cases against MFO and CCC for violating the antimonopoly law in the recent years. Olga Sergeeva pointed out, in particular, that “MFO and CCC are violators only on the cases on unfair competition (Article 14 of the Federal Law “On Protection of Competition)”.

She also paid attention to some issues of advertising microfinance institutions: typical violations of the law on advertising; and enforcement of the prohibition of advertising services for granting consumer loans by the persons not involved in professional activities for granting consumer loans.