| REGULATOR CONFERENCE – ECRC took part in a Budapest Conference organised for regulators to build an extra level of dialogue into the coalition's work. |
“FINANCIAL CAPABILITY – RESPONSIBLE LENDING”.
ECRC presented its principles and the Coalition itself during the 4th International Forum on Financial Consumer Protection and Education that took place on 16th October 2007 in Budapest. ECRC was officially invited by the Hungarian Financial Supervisory Authority to give an overview on the activities and issues the European Coalition for Responsible Credit is working on. The Round Table discussion with Jeanne Hoghart from the US Federal Reserve Board (USA), Colin Neave from the Australian Banking and Financial Services Ombudsman (AUS) and Achim Tiffe from the institute for financial services (GER) as a representative of ECRC, focussed on discussing consumers’ attitude in the credit market and reflection on the viewpoint of consumer protection organisations. The ECRC opinion put forward and presented to the audience made up mainly of regulators, was based on the timely input received from a number of its partners ahead of the conference, and whom we thank again for highlighting their own country concerns and experiences (INC, FLAC, ADICAE, DOOD and others).
The conference held in Budapest with representatives from European Financial Authorities like FSA (United Kingdom), HSFA (Hungary), FMA (Austria) showed that over-indebtedness and financial literacy is no longer just an issue for consumer associations, debt advisors and academics in Europe but also an issue for Authorities and governmental organisations.
Speakers from FSB (USA), the OECD, the Banking Codes and Standard Boards of India, and National Credit Regulators (South Africa) also showed the importance there is in discussing related issues not only on a European but also on an international level.
The two-day conference showed that the authorities are conscious of the link between consumer credit and macro-economic risks, and that they have started to develop programmes for financial literacy on a broad level. Therefore it seems very important and a chance for consumer associations, social organisations and debt advisers to share the experience with the authorities. We will no doubt have more participation by the professionals in charge of regulating financial activity in the future ECRC stakeholder events building on the 7 international conferences we have held to date.
Discussed were issues like financial literacy programmes on a broader level, the implementation of Codes for responsible lending for banks on a voluntary basis, the forms of blemishing forms of irresponsible lending and the improvement of statistics in relation to consumer debts.
In the face of the US sub-prime loan crisis, which does not have only negative effects for millions of US-American consumers/lenders but also for the global world economy, the role of authorities was discussed with a new perspective, what could be the role of authorities in the future. Issues were a better early warning system with the focus on consumer debts, a systematic control of forms of irresponsible lending and the establishing of codes also for responsible lending.
Future work could be the implementation of financial literacy programmes on a broad level, a kind of early warning system for the authorities based on the field work of consumer associations, consumer organisations and academics and a steady exchange of information. Besides these programmes the basic of statistical material, the national authorities provide, was discussed and it seems that an important part of „credit forms“ like leasing or other forms are not included in the official governmental statistics for consumer indebtedness. Therefore ECRC plans to invite the authorities to the next ECRC-conference in November 2008 in the Netherlands to continue the started discussion. |
| ID: |
40709 |
| Author(s): |
SCR |
| Publication date: |
01/11/07 |
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Created: 20/12/07. Last changed: 20/12/07.
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