Financial Consumer Protection

Financial Consumer protection is one of the activties of the Centre under the Consumer Empowerment programmatic area’ to ‘Financial Consumer Protection is one of the core activities of the Centre under the Consumer Empowerment Programmatic area.

Though all consumers are not investors, all investors are consumers of financial services. Considering this aspect, CUTS was actively involved in investor education and protection activities during the previous decade. CUTS was an Investor Association recognised by the Securities and Exchange Board of India (SEBI) and was registered with Ministry of Corporate Affairs, Government of India under the Investor Education and Protection Fund (IEPF). In the past, CUTS has implemented investor education and protection programmes with the support of both IEPF and SEBI and presently involved in the Securities and Market Awareness Campaign (SMAC) supported by both SEBI and BSE (Bombay Stock Exchange). More details can be seen at: http://cutsinternational.org/cart/Investor_Education_and_Protection.htm

CUTS is presently actively involved in the ‘Consumers for Fair Financial Services’ campaign, which is a global campaign to increase consumers’ access to stable, fair and competitive financial markets launched by the Consumers International (CI) along with other consumer organizations across the world. More details about the global campaign can be seen at: http://www.consumersinternational.org/our-work/financial-services/key-projects/g20-campaign

The campaign, that was launched by CI in October 2010 called on G20 leaders to set up a new Experts Working Group to make recommendations to address issues related to financial services, which resulted in the G20 leaders instructing the Financial Stability Board (FSB) to report back to the next summit in 2011 on options to advance consumer finance protection. Subsequently Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) was also called upon to develop common principles on consumer protection in financial services. CUTS is presently engaging with the national contacts of FSB and OECD, i.e. RBI and SEBI respectively, in the process of providing country level inputs to the recommendations to G20. CUTS is also a member of the CI’s international working group on financial consumer protection.