Principles for Effective Creditor Rights and Insolvency Systems

Insolvency and creditor rights (ICR) constitutes one of the twelve areas in which the joint World Bank and International Monetary Fund (IMF) Initiative on Standards and Codes undertakes assessments.

In order to carry out these assessments, the World Bank uses the World Bank Principles for Effective Insolvency and Creditor Rights Systems (Principles) and the UNCITRAL Legislative Guide on Insolvency Law (Legislative Guide).  These two complementary texts represent the international consensus on best practices and set forth a unified standard for ICR systems.  In addition, these texts serve as reference points for evaluating and strengthening countries’ ICR systems. 

The Principles were developed in 2001 in response to a request from the international community in the wake of the financial crisis in emerging markets in the late 1990s.  At that time, they constituted the first internationally recognized benchmarks to evaluate the effectiveness of domestic creditor rights and insolvency systems. In 2005 the Principles were revised.

The original text and the 2005 revised text of the Principles are available here: 

	Revised Insolvency and Creditor Rights Systems Principles (2005) English (pdf 1.61 mb)       Spanish/Español (pdf 1.96 mb)       French/Français (pdf 1.82 mb) Russian (pdf 1.96 mb)
	Insolvency and Creditor Rights Systems Principles (2001)  English (pdf 6.02 mb)       Spanish/Español (pdf 7.07 mb)   French / Français (pdf 7.77 mb)  Russian (pdf 13.65 mb)

 

The UNCITRAL Legislative Guide was completed in 2004 with the goal of encouraging the adoption of effective national corporate insolvency regimes.   The Legislative Guide focuses on the key elements of an effective insolvency law and presents a detailed series of Legislative Recommendations (“Recommendations”) which include a discussion of various options and approaches.  The text of the Legislative Guide is available on the UNCITRAL website. 

The World Bank, and UNCITRAL, in consultation with the IMF, have prepared the Insolvency and Creditor Rights Standard for ICR ROSC assessments (the “ICR Standard”). The ICR Standard combines both the Principles and the Recommendations in one document.

This unified ICR Standard is available here: Insolvency and Creditor Rights Standard (2005)

 

If you have additional comments or queries regarding the Insolvency and Creditor Rights Standard (2005), please send them to gild@worldbank.org. 

The ICR ROSC assessments are carried out using this methodology.