COVID-19. FinCoNet Newsletter highlights an international initiative to coordinate consumer protection measures

The International Financial Consumer Protection Organisation (FinCoNet) highlights, in its latest newsletter, an initiative, coordinated by the OECD, to survey and share information at global level on the consumer protection measures being adopted by several countries for mitigating the impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Both FinCoNet and the G20/OECD Task Force on Financial Consumer Protection support this exercise coordinated by the OECD. Through FinCoNet and in the spirit of collaboration, the possibility of participating in this initiative has been extended to members of the World Bank and Alliance for Financial Inclusion, particularly including developing countries.

In this edition of the newsletter, FinCoNet also takes note of the Banco de Portugal’s recent initiative to promote among credit institutions the adoption of good practices in the disclosure of fees to customers.

Note that credit institutions in Portugal must send their customers a statement of fees, an ‘invoice-receipt’ breaking down the fees and expenses charged to current accounts in the previous year. In the article “Fee disclosure through digital channels” the authors explain how the Banco de Portugal oversaw the sending of the statements and provided good practices to be observed by institutions for issuing the statement using digital channels and e-mail.

The newsletter also includes an article by the Consultative Group to Assist the Poor, raising awareness about the benefits and risks of using algorithms to assess customers’ creditworthiness.

The FinCoNet newsletter also includes other articles of interest for banking conduct supervision, among them an article by the supervisory authority of Peru on the amendment of debit and credit card regulations to step up protection and security measures for their customers.

The newsletters can be found on the FinCoNet website and on this website.

 

About FinCoNet

FinCoNet is an international organisation of supervisory authorities which have responsibility for market conduct in the sale of retail banking products.

Its main goal is to improve the protection of banking product consumers, focusing on credit products and payment services.

Banco de Portugal, as banking conduct supervisory authority, is a founder member of FinCoNet and is a member of the Governing Council, presently as Chair.

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