On The Legal Status Of Financial Consumers' Protection

Since 2008 the U.S. financial crisis, countries have re-examined their financial regulatory system, and paid more attention to financial consumer protection. Many countries in the world have reformed the supervision system of financial consumer protection agency, endowing such agency with unique legal status, i.e. independent of financial supervision agencies and governments. For example, the United States had passed the "Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act" to set up an independent financial consumer protection agency. After Cameron government taking office, UK government had pushed out a new governmental financial regulatory reform plan "new approach financial regulation:judgment, focus and stability" on July 26,2010, which is planned to be enforced at the end of 2012. The programs above all highlight the fact that the countries put emphasis on the financial consumer protection after the financial crisis. Internationally, these consumer financial protection agencies have considerable independence, and are separated from financial regulators responsible for the prudential supervision. This is also a practice of expression of the view of many scholars advocate.At present, PBC, CIRC, CSRC and CBRC has recently established Consumer Protection Bureau in 2012, which also uses the positive after-fiancial-crisis policies of other countries for reference. However, different from other countries, the Consumer Protection Bureau in China is the internal organs of financial regulators like PBC, CIRC, CSRC, and CBRC. Can such an agency with non-independent legal status protect the financial interests of consumers to the largest extent? It has been the topical issues among news media and financial consumers.Currently, China has no law explicitly formulating the legal status of financial consumer protection agency. China’s financial consumer protection agency is the internal organ of to PBC, CSRC, CIRC, the CBRC, which is not independent of financial supervision agencies nor governments. Such kind of dependent legal status of financial consumer protection agency prone to regulatory loopholes and regulatory gaps, which is harmful to financial consumer protection agency to protect the financial interests of consumers. In theory, mixed operation theory, regulatory capture theory and bimodal theory all support that financial consumer protection agencies should be independent. By comparative analysis, it is proved that the independent financial consumer protection agency take more advantages over the non-independent one. As financial consumer protection agencies in different countries and regions have different legal status, considering the differences of geography, history, and other aspects of national polity, in this paper aanalysis of the setting of financial consumer protection agency in the United States, Britain, Australia has been conducted to obtain the corresponding revelation:we should use the legitimate formulation to set independent legal status of China financial consumer protection agency, which make it independent of financial supervision agencies and should guarantee the independent status through the improvement of financial system.