A comparative approach to mutual guarantee institutions in Italy and the United Kingdom

In the last years, there have been numerousness transformations that had modified radically the business of Confidi(s), the Italian mutual guarantee institutions. Starting from Confidi Law, in 2003, (Law Decree no. 269/2003, converted in Law no. 326/2003), Confidi(s) had been classified into two main categories. Then with the Legislative Decree no. 141/2010, Confidi(s) were classified as “bigger or supervised” which corresponded on “Confidi(s) 107” or “smaller or not-supervised” (the new one art. 112-bis ICBL). The Legislative Decree considered just one register in which all the subjects who wanted to exercise the business of granting funding had to register on it. Instead, the smaller Confidi(s) had to register in a specific list which is subjected to the supervision of an Organism which is different from the Bank of Italy, as in the first case. Not only in Italy, but also in the United Kingdom the Guarantee System has developed, in particular with the Small Firms Loan Guarantee Scheme (SFLG), and then with the National Association of Mutual Guarantee Societies (NAMGS) after the development of Mutual Guarantees Societies (MGS). Even if the English process of granting funding has been developed later, in the United Kingdom it has been founded British Business Bank with the role of providing credit to small entrepreneurs. Given the importance of SMEs in the European economy and their difficulties in accessing loan finance, guarantee organizations have been set up in nearly all EU Member States as well as third States. To reinforce their positions in the market and share with them their best practices, several mutual guarantee institutions founded the European Association of Guarantee Institutions (AECM).