Lending to small and medium businesses in the Russian Federation: problems and development prospects

One of the most serious problems faced by small and medium-sized businesses is the lack of financial resources combined with the inaccessibility of bank lending. Since the development of small and medium-sized businesses is one of the priority tasks of state regulation of the Russian economy, special attention is paid to solving this problem. This paper presents an analysis of external and internal factors that are the reasons for the formation of high rates and fairly strict conditions imposed by credit institutions on SMEs; it has been established that high requirements are due to increased risks characteristic of this sector of the economy. In order to reduce the risk of non-repayment of loans provided to small and medium-sized businesses for banking organizations, an umbrella guarantee mechanism was developed, which makes it possible to attract a specially created SME Corporation as a guarantor. As the research results show, the active implementation of such a mechanism is already producing positive results. This form of collateral for SME lending becomes even more relevant given the recent increase in the key rate.