The Research On Legal System Of Bank Secrecy

Bank secrecy system is a very important legal problem of the relationship between banks and their customers in banking law. It plays an essential role of financial privacy protection. Both common law and civil law system have made specific regulations of it. But with the development of society, the defects have gradually appeared. The exception rules of bank secrecy system thus have been established, which means under some special circumstances, bank has the obligation to disclose customer's related information.These defects have raised a series of legal problems and got more and more dispute. Strict bank secrecy system brings difficulties for information attaining, especially for credit information collection, money laundering fighting, tax investigation and financial supervision etc.In theory, it is actually the collision between information secrecy and disclosure, also between private rights and public interests. Meanwhile, secrecy grade in one country differs from that in another, and the jurisdiction overextends to foreign countries, which makes the collision occurs frequently in international intercourse. The reasons for these international problems appear to be the divarication of legislation, but the essential reason lies in the seeking of country's own interests. For instance, the United States emphasizes and expands information disclosure to fight with terrorism and financial crime, while Switzerland sticks to strict bank secrecy system to keep its finance prosperous.To solve these problems, the law should not only take public interests as standard, but also keep financial privacy from violation, not only reform domestic legislation but also cooperate with international partners, not only concentrate on homeland's need, but also assort with universal interests.There is no systematic bank secrecy law in China, and the protection of financial privacy has always been disregarded in practice. Now as there are many flaws in the legislation system and the laws, we need to improve our bank secrecy system as soon as possible in the following ways: making specific bank secrecy law, regulating the scope and procedure of information disclosure, and improving the related law rules of international cooperation.