(Finance) – Legal, regulatory and supervisory framework; role of supervisory bodies; access to financial inclusion; financial awareness literacy; competition; fair and equitable treatment of consumers; transparency information; quality financial products; responsible corporate culture conduct of financial service providers and intermediaries; protection of consumer goods from fraud, scams and misuse; data protection and consumer privacy; handling and resolution of complaints. These are the 12 areas of application of the updated version of the High-Level Principles on Financial Consumer Protection emanated from OECD/G20 Task Force for the Protection of consumers of financial products.
It is a soft law that establishes the fundamental requirements that national legal systems should comply with in order to effectively protect consumers on this front. With a warning, the Bank of Italy explains that the principles have been updated since the first version, published in 2011, also to take into account the lessons learned from the impact of Covid on consumers of financial products and services, as well as the evolution of digitalisation.
The principles lay the foundations for an overall regulation of consumer protection. Therefore, they touch on all the relevant aspects, says Bank of Italy: from the regulatory framework to the supervisory tools for intermediaries, from literacy to financial inclusion, from transparency to the protection of consumer assets from fraud or scams, without forgetting the protection of privacy of consumers and the management and resolution of potential complaints.
“Protection policies for consumers of financial products strengthen trust in the financial system and favor people’s inclusion and financial resilience – highlights Bank of Italy – – addressing the problem of information asymmetries between intermediaries and consumers and ensuring that the latter are treated fairly and protected from possible damage.