News

Proposals for G20 financial services reform fail consumers

10 Aug 2011

New proposals to be put to the G20 for improving financial consumer protection do not go far enough, Consumers International believes.

The draft international principles on financial consumer protection, drawn up by the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) and now out for public consultation, were requested by G20 finance ministers. This follows Consumers International's call to the G20 for international action to enhance consumer protection in financial services as part of the Consumers for Fair Financial Services campaign.

However, the current draft principles raise serious concerns for the consumer movement:

Overall the draft does not demonstrate the commitment needed to address consumers' concerns about financial consumer protection. Too often the principles are undermined by language such as 'voluntary', 'non binding' and 'as appropriate.'
CI is very concerned that the draft does not recommend that consumers' assets such as bank deposits should be guaranteed. Deposit guarantee schemes are a protection for all actors, not only consumers. Systemic stability is also protected by such guarantees, which dissuade consumers from making panic withdrawals from their banks.
There should be a clear reference to the right of regulatory authorities to require that products have to conform to certain standards in order to be released onto the market, or to continue to be marketed.

Finally, CI urges governments to support the development of an international organisation for promoting financial consumer protection. The existing international network of financial consumer protection organisations, FinCoNet, should be given the political support and resources to play a more effective role at the global level.

As part of the public consultation CI member organisations around the world are writing to their finance ministers and directly to the OECD with this response, as well as submitting examples from their own country of the consequences of failures in financial consumer protection.

Members of the public can also comment directly on the proposals. Details of how to do this can be found on the OECD's public consultation page.

Find CI's summary response below, and, together with other position papers, on the Resources page in the Consumers For Fair Financial Services section.