D14 - Household Saving; Personal FinanceReturn

Micro, small and medium-sized enterprises in ASEAN play a significant role in ASEAN GDP, but their access to financial services or fintech has been relatively low. In this context, the emergence of companies offering fintech services or technology-enabled financial services, has been welcomed to access financial services that would otherwise be difficult to obtain from formal financial institutions during the pandemic. Our research focusses on five Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) countries, particularly Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, Singapore and Thailand, to answer the following questions. First, what is the impact of the usage of fintech platforms on business performance, particularly in terms of revenue and profit, during the pandemic? Then, we evaluate the channels of firm activities driven by fintech borrowing during the COVID-19 period. The empirical findings show that fintech borrowing generally improved MSMEs' business performance during the pandemic, both revenues and profits.

The paper deals with the agent-principal problem (adverse selection) in the distribution of investment products. Utilising data from the Czech financial market, a linear model with mixed effects was constructed, evaluating the relationship between remuneration of individual agents and quality-costs of the products they recommend. The results were structured for different organisational setups. We have found that in some less important environments from the market perspective (small and medium multi-level marketing networks, small and big pools, medium and big flat firms), there is a negative association between quality-cost of the contracted product and the amount of commission paid out to the agent. This indicates potential consumer detriment. In the majority of organisations dominating the industry, however, the direction of this relationship is positive in nature or statistically insignificant. Hence, the systemic potential for instigating the adverse selection was not detected in a major part of the market, bringing up regulatory implications in the conflict of interest and inducements area.