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The purpose of this paper is to find out how effectively implemented are measuring approaches to compliance and whether there is a correlation between the measures implementation, financial specialisation and international activity. The authors evaluate if the regulatory framework implies a measure cost asymmetry, depending both on the proportionality principle and on the existence of different supervisors with an heterogeneous set of enforcement rules.

The analysis is based on a survey involving 84 financial firms (banks, investment companies and insurance companies). Two criteria have been used to interpret the results: the prevailing workability within international and domestic intermediaries; the intermediary typology, creating a distinction between banks other financial intermediaries (FIs) and insurance companies.

Italian financial firms are sensitive to minimise sanctions, but the reputational impact is becoming more important. International firms are more sophisticated than domestic ones for their ability to measure both the probability of non‐compliance events and their severity. Banks show the highest attitude to adopt insurance or financial contracts to minimise the negative impact of non‐compliant behaviours. Small FIs are late in measuring the exposure and losses due to non‐compliance actions.

Four years after the Basel Document on compliance, a large percentage of firms is still managing the process within a function with different purposes; nevertheless, reputational impact has become more important. Small intermediaries show a lower attitude to implement a risk management approach, with a capital management sensitivity. This finding addresses the question about the existence of size effect which could reduce the compliance attitude.

The purpose of this paper is to establish the relationship between institutional framework of regulative (formal rules), normative (informal norms) and cultural-cognitive (cognition), and their effects on financial intermediation by microfinance deposit taking institutions (MDIs) in developing economies like Uganda.

Data collected from a total sample of 400 poor households and 40 relationship officers located in rural Uganda were processed using statistical package for social sciences and analysis of moment structures to establish the relationship between institutional framework of regulative, normative and cultural-cognitive, and their effects on financial intermediation by MDIs in developing economies.

The results showed that the three dimensions of regulative (formal rules), normative (informal norms) and cultural-cognitive (cognition) significantly affect financial intermediation by MDIs in developing economies like Uganda. In addition, as a unique finding, two new dimensions of procedural and declarative cognition emerged from cultural-cognitive framework to determine financial intermediation among MDIs in developing economies, specifically in Uganda.

The study collected data from only poor households and relationship officers located in rural Uganda. It ignored peri-urban and urban areas in Uganda. In addition, the study focused only on MDIs and ignored other financial institutions. Besides, the study was purely quantitative, therefore, further research through interviews may be useful in future. Furthermore, the study was carried out in rural Uganda as a developing economy. Thus, future research using the same variables in other developing economies may be useful.

Managers of financial institutions and policy makers should know that market functions of financial intermediaries in developing economies are promoted by institutional framework of regulative, normative and procedural and declarative cognition that lowers transaction cost and promotes information sharing. Therefore, more efforts should be directed towards strengthening the existing institutional framework of regulative, normative and cognition to promote financial intermediation by financial institutions such as MDIs.

This paper is the first to test the relationship between institutional framework and their effects on financial intermediation by MDIs in developing economies. The results revealed existence of two new factor structures of procedural and declarative cognition in explaining financial intermediation by MDIs in developing economies like Uganda. This is sparse in financial intermediation literature and theory.

This paper aims to summarize amendments to Rule 22c‐2 under the Investment Company Act of 1940, the “redemption fee rule”, adopted by the Securities and Exchange Commission on September 26, 2006.

Provides background to the redemption fee rule, defines financial intermediaries and intermediary chains, and discusses how funds are expected to implement the rule and associated frequent trading policies.

Under the redemption fee rule, the boards of most mutual funds are required to consider whether to implement a fee of up to 2 percent of the value of any shares redeemed by a customer from a fund within a short time after purchase. Amendments to the rule clarify operation of the rule and reduce mutual funds' costs in complying with it.

Outlines the requirements of the amendments to Rule 22c‐2 under the Investment Company Act of 1940.

Drawing from the fact that institutions act as incentives and disincentives to human behaviour in financial markets, the purpose of this study is to examine the moderating role of institutional pillars in the relationship between financial intermediation and financial inclusion of the poor in rural Uganda.

The study used cross-sectional research design and data were collected from the poor residing in rural Uganda. Statistical package for social sciences was used to analyse the data. Descriptive statistics, correlations and regression analyses were generated. Besides, ModGraph excel programme was adopted to graphically explain the moderating role of institutional pillars in the relationship between financial intermediation and financial inclusion of the poor in rural Uganda.

The results revealed that institutional pillars of regulative (formal rules), normative (informal norms) and cultural cognitive (cognition) significantly moderate the relationship between financial intermediation and financial inclusion of the poor. Furthermore, the results also indicated that financial intermediation and institutional pillars have significant effects on financial inclusion of the poor in rural Uganda.

The study focuses on only cross-sectional design, thus, leaving out longitudinal study. Future research using longitudinal data that explore behaviours of the poor over time could be useful. In addition, only quantitative data were used to measure variables under study and use of qualitative data were ignored. Thus, further studies using qualitative data are feasible.

Policymakers and advocates of financial inclusion in a developing country such as Uganda should adopt institutional pillars (regulative, normative and cultural-cognitive) in promoting financial intermediation in rural areas. The institutional pillars working in combination set the “rule of the game” or “humanly devise constraints” that guide economic exchange by promoting and limiting certain actions of actors in underdeveloped financial market as stipulated by North (1990) and Scott (1995).

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is the first attempt to examine the moderating role of institutional pillars under the theory of institutions in the relationship between financial intermediation and financial inclusion of the poor in a developing country setting. Indeed, institutions guide contract enforceability and information sharing in human interaction to lower transaction cost in the financial markets. This is missing in literature and theory of financial intermediation in promoting financial inclusion, especially in rural Uganda.

The purpose of this study is to propose a framework for conceptualizing the finance-growth theory in developing economies.

The study uses a cointegration and error correction model to investigate the possible influence of key socio-political characters of a state on the causal relationship between financial development and economic growth. A developing economy (Nigeria) which had experienced decades of autocratic military governance was studied. Three characters of the state (ethnicity, civil war and military governance) were derived from a historical review and were introduced into the cointegration analysis as dummy variables.

Evidence of a causal relationship was found to exist from financial development to economic growth and the characters of the state were found to have no significant impact on this relationship.

The research limitations were based on the reliability of data recorded between 1960 and 2007.

This study is practical from the point of view of the integration of qualitative social disturbances into a quantitative model targeted at exploring the practical developmental impact these disturbances may have had and continue to have on economic growth.

The social implication of this study stems from the impact that adverse socio-political influences may have on financial development and economic growth.

This is an original piece of research focused at understanding the unique social, political and macroeconomic circumstance of a strategically relevant developing economy.

Studies of Depression-era financial remediation have generally focused on federal deposit insurance and the provision of equity to banks by the Reconstruction Finance Corporation (RFC). This paper broadens the concept of financial remediation to include other programs – RFC lending, federal guarantees of farm and home mortgages, and the elimination of interest on demand deposits – and other intermediaries – savings and loans, mutual savings banks, and life insurance companies. The benefits of remediation or the amounts potentially at risk to the government in these programs are calculated annually and allocated to the various intermediaries. The slow remediation of real estate loans (two-thirds of these intermediaries' loans) needs further study with respect to the slow economic recovery. The paper compares Depression-era remediation with efforts during the 2008–2009 crisis. Today's remediation contrasts with the 1930s in its speed, magnitude relative to GDP or private sector nonfinancial debt, the share of remediation going to nonbanks, and emphasis on securities markets.

To provide an investigation of e‐commerce development via an examination of the forces shaping web site development among intermediaries in an extended supply chain.

A two‐stage research design combining qualitative and quantitative methods. Unstructured interviews conducted in the spirit of phenomenology elicited a range of critical incidents of web site development which were further examined via a quantitative survey of intermediaries to test for relationships between critical incidents and web site adoption.

Adopter groups were identified which showed statistically significant differences in terms of the critical incidents driving web site development as well as differences in terms of key company characteristics. The timing of web site adoption was also found to affect the subsequent use of the technology, with early adopters making more advanced use.

Limitations associated with the use of retrospective data and respondents’ abilities to recall events, although attempts were made to minimise these through external validation.

Provides useful insights for providers of financial services in understanding how to progress the adoption of web site technology by intermediaries, suggesting the development of networks of relationships involving IT suppliers rather than simply focusing on relationships with preferred intermediaries.

Addresses a research gap in terms of business‐to‐business e‐commerce and offers practical guidance on how to widen participation in the financial services supply chain.

A major lesson of the European Monetary Union (EMU) crisis is that serious disequilibria result from regional monetary arrangements not designed to be robust to a variety of shocks. The purpose of this paper is to assess these disequilibria within the Economic and Monetary Community of Central Africa (CEMAC), West African Economic and Monetary Union (UEMOA) and Financial Community of Africa (CFA) zones.

In the assessments, monetary policy targets inflation and financial dynamics of depth, efficiency, activity and size while real sector policy targets economic performance in terms of GDP growth. The author also provides the speed of convergence and time required to achieve a 100 percent convergence.

But for financial intermediary size within the CFA zone, findings, for the most part, support only unconditional convergence. There is no form of convergence within the CEMAC zone.

The broad insignificance of conditional convergence results has substantial policy implications. Monetary and real policies, which are often homogenous for member states, are thwarted by heterogeneous structural and institutional characteristics, which give rise to different levels and patterns of financial intermediary development. Therefore, member states should work towards harmonizing cross‐country differences in structural and institutional characteristics that hamper the effectiveness of monetary policies.

The paper provides warning signs to the CFA zone in the heat of the Euro zone crises.

Decentralized finance (DeFi), enabled by blockchain, could bring about a new financial system, where peers will interact directly, with little or no place for traditional intermediation. However, some crucial tasks cannot be left solely to an algorithm and, consequently, most DeFi applications still require human decisions. The aim of this research is to assess the role of intermediation in the light of DeFi, analysing how humans and algorithms will interact.

The authors based their work on a twofold qualitative methodology, first analysing publicly available secondary data, particularly from white papers and DeFi Pulse (a website providing data on DeFi solutions) and then running two focus group discussions.

DeFi does not eliminate financial intermediation, but enables it to be performed in new ways, where decentralization means that no single entity can hold too much power or monopoly. DeFi has, however, inherited risks from the underlying technologies that unintentionally facilitate illegal behaviour and can hamper the authorities’ supervision. The complex duality algorithm- vs human-based actions will not be solved indisputably in favour of the former, as DeFi solutions can range from requiring algorithms to play a dominant role, to enabling greater human interaction by actively involving more people.

This research contributes to the emerging debate between algorithm- and human-based intermediation, especially in relation to the standing literature on financial intermediation, where considerations made in the light of the newest theories on blockchain and DeFi are still scarce.