Related items
Showing items related by title, author, creator and subject.
-
Global Survey on Consumer Protection and Financial Literacy : Oversight Frameworks and Practices in 114 EconomiesFinancial consumer protection and
 financial education policies, in conjunction with the
 regulation of financial institutions and markets, need to
 ensure safe access to financial services and support
 financial stability and financial inclusion objectives.
 Consumer protection and financial literacy can contribute to
 improved efficiency, transparency, competition, and access
 to retail financial markets by reducing information
 asymmetries and power imbalances among providers and users
 of financial services. Rapid progress toward widespread
 financial inclusion must be appropriately complemented with
 checks and balances that ensure a responsible provision of
 financial services and products. A number of international
 efforts are in place to improve dialogue and identify best
 practices in financial consumer protection. To contribute to
 the international dialogue on financial consumer protection
 the World Bank in conjunction with Fin-CoNet, an
 international cooperation platform for supervisory agencies
 in the area of financial consumer protection, conducted a
 global survey on consumer protection and financial literacy
 to collect information from financial regulatory agencies in
 114 economies. This brief summarizes the key results of the
 survey and accompanies the release of the data collected to
 provide timely feedback on the results.
-
Financial Inclusion in Brazil : Building on SuccessThe development of a far reaching
 correspondent banking network is one of the key factors
 behind Brazil's success story in financial inclusion.
 Between 2005 and 2011, the number of correspondents
 approximately doubled to more than 160,000. The Central Bank
 encouraged financial institutions to reach out to more
 distant consumers and to communities where they had not
 previously been active, including lower income areas,
 through partnerships with a variety of retail establishments
 including some with public ties such as the post office
 network and lottery agencies. Regulators have gradually
 reduced restrictions on correspondent banking, such as
 individual approval processes, in response to early
 successes with this program. The legal framework also
 facilitated healthy expansion by putting the onus on
 regulated institutions to train and monitor their
 correspondents. This Technical Note (TN) does not include an
 analysis of the causes underlying Brazil's continued
 high credit cost but many of the issues discussed here may
 be contributing factors. These include the lack of savings
 and related dependence on credit which may reduce price
 elasticity in credit markets; information asymmetries which
 add to the cost of credit evaluation and increase risk for
 lenders; and competition issues (as with mobile payments and
 the so-called no-surcharge-rule on payment methods). The
 Aide Memoire for the FSAP mission provides further
 discussion of these important issues.
-
Consumer Protection Laws and Regulations in Deposit and Loan Services : A Cross-Country Analysis with a New Data SetConsumer protection and financial
 literacy can contribute to improved efficiency,
 transparency, competition, and access in retail financial
 markets by reducing information asymmetries and power
 imbalances between providers and users of financial
 services. Financial consumer protection has gained
 significance in policy debates, especially since the onset
 of the financial crisis in 2008. This paper presents the
 results of a survey on consumer protection regulations in
 142 countries. The findings indicate that although consumer
 protection legislation is in place in the majority of
 countries, these do not necessarily address the issues
 specific to financial services. There is some evidence that
 enforcement powers and monitoring capacity are limited in
 many countries, obstructing the effective implementation of
 the existing regulations. Furthermore, independent third
 party dispute resolution mechanisms are not widespread. The
 paper also compiles comprehensive information on laws and
 regulations relevant for consumer protection and discusses a
 number of challenges related to empirical analyses of
 financial consumer protection to enable cross-country comparison.