As in every country, Indonesia has a wide spectrum of financial institutions and financial
markets. They range from large, somewhat sophisticated financial institutions – large domestic
and foreign banks, insurance companies, and the capital market – which engage in very large
(wholesale) financial transactions with large enterprises, to “retail” finance for SMEs and
individual depositors and borrowers, to micro finance – credit cooperatives, rotating credit
cooperatives, moneylenders – for the smallest, predominantly rural producers in informal markets.
In the process of economic development the formal financial sector is dominated by banks which
tend to finance large firms and trade, both foreign and domestic. Formal and informal financial
markets co-exist, segmented essentially by scale and creditworthiness of borrower. As the saving
rate increases, and banks are increasingly able to attract them, the financial intermediation process
develops and spreads. There is a trickle-down effect: the formal financial system gradually
supercedes the informal system for more and more clients, both savers and borrowers. At the
same time traditional small-scale informal financial institutions evolve into more formal, “modern”
financial institutions. Moneylenders start local banks and credit associations; highly personalized
rotating credit cooperatives evolve into mutual savings and loan associations and then banks.