The Competition Authority has decided to continue with the investigation of non-banking financial subjects. They rejected the requests of three companies that have a dominating position in this market.
In February 2020, the competition has identified five companies that dominated most of the market in their operating areas; loans, microcredit, financial rent, factoring, payment services and money transfer.
Some of them, despite their dominating position, were applying interests and commissions higher than the competitions. In some cases, the weight that a financial institution has in the respective market reaches 90%. These are the reasons that pushed the competition to suspect of abuse and of a possible violation of the law for defending the competition.
Three of these companies have requested to repeal the decision for a thorough investigation, but the institution decided to carry on with the procedure that includes the 2018-2020 period.
In parallel with the microcredit market, the Bank of Albania is trying to set a maximal ceiling on the interest rates that the micro-financial institutions are applying for defending consumers. Something that has been opposed by these businesses, with the argument that they are operating in a market with a high risk and a high cost.