Small and medium-sized enterprises: transformation of the Russian crediting and microfinancing system

Introduction: the article covers the results of Russia’s small business history analysis and the problems concerning the current status of legal regulation in the small and medium business sector; the research was performed on the issues associated with the modern opportunities and conditions of providing small and medium-sized enterprises (hereinafter referred to as SMEs) with financial resources by the national credit institutions. Purpose: to build an advanced legal and prudential contour of credit institutions, and improve the protection of SMEs as parties to a credit contract (loan agreement). Methods: the methodological framework of the research is based on a set of scientific cognition methods, with the following principal ones - analysis, synthesis, generalization, induction and deduction, classification, interpretation, as well as historical, comparative, statistical, sociological methods. Results: following the results of the research performed by the authors in the context of increasing the affordability of credit resources for SMEs, some proposals have been made for improving the whole structure of the Russian bank-ing system, as well as the legal status of its new subject - the bank holding a basic license; be-sides, some proposals have been put forward for improving the conditions for granting loans to SMEs by formal subjects of the banking system, and by microfinance organizations and credit cooperative unions in respect of their regulation convergence with credit organizations and reduction of the possibilities for regulatory arbitration. Conclusions: the institutional system of granting loans to SMEs is undergoing transformation, the development of the legal contour of the microfinance and cooperative bank is required, as well as the renovation of the legal status of non-bank depository-credit organizations.