Microfinance sector in general and regulating microfinance institutions (MFIs) in particular have been drawing greatly attention of researchers, practitioners as well as regulators over the past decade. Besides advocates for rush to regulated microfinance, not few opponents caution to form and transform regulated microfinance institutions. The practice also simultaneously reflects both contrary sides as referred in those research studies and reports. Given in such controversial context, the paper aims at comparing the performance between regulated and non-regulated microfinance institutions. Mainly base on the research of Hartarska & Nadolnyak (2007), the first study so far examined the impact of regulation on MFIs, this paper deliberately focusing on Southeast Asia countries. The most important objectives are to test the effect of regulatory factor to MFIs and compare to the past literature reviews. The findings after using the empirical analysis shows that regulatory status have no direct effect on sustainability and number of active borrowers, as well as efficiency that are consistent with the cross-country evidence. However, the result finds the negative influence of savings to outreach and efficiency, which is considered as indirect effect of regulation. In other words, MFIs have savings reach less number of borrowers and efficiency.

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