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FinTechs belonging to this category act as a loan creditor (even short and very short-term loans), are broking loans or receivables or conduct factoring of loans, which were given to private or business customers. In this business area you also find “peer-to-peer” (P2P) services, in which FinTechs enable a multitude of users to give loans (and brokered by the FinTech-platform) to other users or companies.
Finetrading is hereby a financial service of FinTechs, where they buy due receivables and grant the debtor an extension of payment time.
As an ancillary service some FinTechs offer alternative credit assessment services to check the solvency of a borrower.
Introduction
Attitude of the country towards loan-giving-, factoring-, brokerage-, finetrading- and ancillary services
There are no reservations.
Legal affairs
Obligations and requirements to provide loan-giving-, factoring-, brokerage-, finetrading, and ancillary services described above
This activity may be encompassed under a specific license called Peer to Peer Lending Platform Administrators (“Empresas Administradoras de Plataformas para préstamos entre personas”) (hereinafter, the “P2P Platform Administrators”). The P2P Platform Administrator is defined as the entity that administrates a web application or other electronic platform designed for peer to peer money loans. Such entities only mediate (“mediación“) between the loan offerors and the loan offerees.
In order to obtain a license, a P2P Platform Administrator must file the following information:
Corporate information (as commercial name, address, taxpayer number, website among others) notarized copy of the by-laws, information regarding the legal representatives, information of its shareholders and senior personnel; information regarding the person or legal entity who has the effective control over the P2P Platform Administrator, affidavit with signature certified by a notary public stating the legitimate origin of the capital, AML Manual describing the integral system for the prevention of money laundering and financing of terrorism, and a detailed description of the activity to be developed, structure of the organization and a description of its information technology structure as well as of the procedures established to perform its services, templates of the agreements to be entered with its clients, a description of the services to outsource that are essential for the operation of the company, attaching the model contracts to be signed and the constitution of a guarantee before the CBU (deposit).
Please note that there is no registration fee.
We estimate that the total process to complete the registration before the CBU is approximately between six (6) to nine (9) months, though the timing will depend on the complexity of the structure, information and documentation submitted, etc. There is no statutory term.
Additional comments regarding the legal situation for loan-giving-, factoring-, brokerage, finetrading-, and ancillary services or what FinTech’s must be aware of in this business area
Under current Uruguayan regulations, any natural person or legal entity, may provide financing to local or foreign companies without being necessary to comply with any particular authorization, licensing or registration procedure, provided that in that case the person providing such financing is not deemed to be carrying out financial intermediation (i.e., banking activity), nor intervenes in the sale of goods and services, by granting credit through credit cards, purchase orders, or other similar methods (i.e., consumer lending companies activity). .
As noted above, it is important that the non-banks providing financing are not deemed to be