Overview

Small and medium enterprises (SMEs) account for over 90% of firms worldwide. Nevertheless, they face greater financing obstacles than larger firms—they enjoy less access to external finance and face higher transactions costs and higher risk premiums. This report focuses on practices aimed at improving SMEs access to finance in three areas—credit reporting, secured lending and insolvency. Each section uses data collected by the Doing Business team to describe how various practices recommended by existing research have been implemented in economies across the world.