The Lendtechs began the winter of 2023 with the shock of the central bank’s notification and spent almost every day after that in search of a common playground and literature with the central bank.
In the last days of January, another fruitless meeting was held between Lendtechs and central bank activists, a meeting in which not only no promising news reached the Lendtechs, but also new problems were added to the work file of the activists in this field, problems that the actors of Landtech Iran caused by He knows the transparency of the platforms and the central bank’s indifference to their effective activities.
According to Iran digital economy annotation, although at the beginning of 2023 with the promises made by the Central Bank in the field of validation model and support for financial technology companies, it was expected that a fruitful year would be waiting for Lendtechs, but in the last quarter of the year, the Central Bank, with the directive “Supervisory Requirements On the way of cooperation of credit institutions with the facilitation companies, the hopes of facilitators were disappointed.
A notice in which the Central Bank prohibited Lendtechs from receiving fees from the customer and also placed the responsibility of the customer’s creditworthiness on the banks. In the other part of this notice, the issue of depositing the facility to the lenders was also mentioned and it was said: the bank cannot deposit the facility to Lendtech’s account and it must be directly provided to the supplier of the goods.
These two issues in this directive were enough for the main income bottleneck of Lendtechs to be under the spotlight and they reacted to this notification, reactions and follow-ups that have not resulted in any results so far.
New troubles
Although Mehran Moharamian, the vice president of new technologies of the central bank, promised to solve their problems at the end of Dey in a meeting with the Lendtechs and asked them to share their suggestions regarding this document with them in writing, but in the end, until the last The meeting of Lendtechs with the Central Bank did not happen.
The last meeting that was held in the last days of January between the activists of the field of facilitation and the Central Bank was not only not successful, but a new challenge called the Consumer Protection Organization was also added to the concerns of Lendtechs. The case of fees and the different approach of the Central Bank and the facilitators to the issue of fees was left open on the table with no results, and some of the facilitators were also accused of overselling.
An accusation called “expensive selling”
The accusation that the activists of the Lendtech field consider to be unfounded and believe that the strictness imposed by the Tazirat and the Central Bank for the platforms is due to the transparency that exists in the platforms. They say that the fees charged from customers in the traditional installment purchase market are much higher than those of lendtechs, but due to the transparency in the online market, the central bank simply disrupts their activities and takes away the possibility of development from them.
They believe that the violations of the traditional market and businesses whose billboards are hung on the door and wall of the city are more than the lendtechs whose all operations are under the microscope, and it is the lack of favor of the central bank that has turned the transparency of the platforms into a challenge for them.
On the other hand, Lendtechs say that the central bank ignores their hidden and obvious costs for the development of the platform and human resources, while Lendtechs pay high costs for technological infrastructure, and the salaries of human resources in technological companies are much higher than in traditional companies. The fee of 68 thousand tomans does not cover their business expenses.
But the central bank also has its own opinions regarding its strictness in this regard and relates everything to the fees of the lendtakis. In a meeting held in Dey, Mohammad Hatefi, the representative of the deputy supervision of the central bank, responded to the sharp criticisms of the lendtakis.
The central bank stated that their view of the central bank is not a one-dimensional view and they cannot act as an island in this regard, and emphasized that the economic policies of the central bank are primarily on the side of the final customers, i.e. depositors.
In fact, Central Bank activists believe that the main risk is still with the banks, and these are the banks that provide financing, and violations of the laws and high fees have forced the Central Bank to issue this regulation.
In the end, what seems to be in practice, in a situation where even traditional banks could not provide facilities below 200 million Tomans without a guarantor, it was Lendtech that took the risk of these activities and was able to receive facilities without a guarantor and provide facilities to people with no credit rating.
Provide Lendtechs have paid 15% more facilities in developing provinces and 4% more in less privileged provinces than the banking network, and 70% of the granting of facilities to those who had no credit rating has been done by Lendtechs.
It seems that until the correct definition of lending technology and facilities is not made in the country, the losers of this story will still be the majority of users who cannot use micro-facilities without guarantors and checks.
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