The Securities and Exchanges Commission (SEC) is warning lending and financing companies to report their newly launched online lending platforms (OLPs), because failure to do so may lead to the suspension and/or revocation of their licenses.
Per its notice issued on June 22, the SEC reminds financing and lending companies to comply with the SEC Memorandum Circular No. 19 Series of 2019, which requires these companies to disclose their OLPs not longer than 10 days since the start of the OLPs’ operations.
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Designed to protect borrowers from predatory lending, the memorandum circular also requires full disclosure of interest rates and charges that come with loans.
Violation to the memorandum circular comes with a hefty fine of up to a million pesos.
The SEC has an online list of registered OLPs, in which 86 companies along with the names of their respective online lending applications or platforms are listed as of April 2021.