On The Legal Protection Of Financial Consumers

With the rapid spread of the2008U.S. supreme mortgage crisis, financial consumers have become the biggest victims of this global crisis. In response to the impact of financial crisis, countries have introduced laws to protect financial consumers, and to adjust their financial services laws and financial regulation legal, in order to consider financial consumer protection as the key elements of reform. For China’s reality, with the increasing number of financial products and financial services, there must be accompanied by more financial disputes, so to strengthen the protection of financial consumers is imminent.Although the concept of financial consumers has been widely used in china, it has not been defined clearly as a legal one. Due to the strong professional nature of financial businesses and the asymmetry of information, the financial consumers are usually in a more vulnerable position compared to other consumers. It is thus of great necessity for them to have specific legal protection. In addition, the financial products and service tend to be mostly invisible, which makes property rights need to be paid more attention for financial consumers with regards to personal rights. Only make specific regulations to financial consumers and put the emphasis of protection on the property rights can enhance the legislative protection to financial consumers.After the implementation of the open-policy, although the financial industry has entered a period of rapid development, the focus of development is enlarging the size of financial industry and enhancing the ability of gaining profit. It appears that the consumers’interests have been neglected relatively. It is reflected in three sectors: the securities, banking, and insurance, Due to severe information asymmetry, the weak position of consumers is obviously. Reflected in our country’current legislation is appear a series of problems, such as the unknown identity of the financial consumers, the lack of supporting legal and law enforcement in the financial sector, lack of specialized protection agencies, the defects of consumer litigation system, the imperfect information disclosure system, the imperfect financial education system and so on.In the United States, there was a considerable amount of legislation to protect financial consumers before the outbreak of the financial crisis, but there are still protected loopholes and gaps. Financial consumer has its own feature, as for the law can’t scientific analysis the financial consumer’feature at that time. Also not consider to protect the weakness from the consumer protection law perspective. That’s one of the important reasons for the outbreak of the financial crisis. In this context, July15,2010, the U.S. Senate passed the "Dude-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act". In order to ensure that all consumers fairly access to consumer financial products and services market, and ensure that the market is fair, transparent and competitive, by setting up special organizations,such as Consumer Financial Protection Agency, asking the Investor credit rating agencies to improve the transparency of rating behavior and the effectiveness of information disclosure, establishing an effective monitoring mechanism to achieve the effective supervision of financial activities and so on.In order to deal with the reality of the financial consumer protection in our country, we could take effective measures to combine the System of legal protection of financial consumers in USA with our country’s actual situation. First of all, to improve the financial consumer protection legislation, to increase financial consumer protection provisions, to define financial consumer’s identity and the right. Secondly, establishing the specialized financial consumer protection agency, the agency should be run independently, has a range of powers of supervision, inspection and enforcement. It should be has a good legal execution. At the same time. Should strengthen the financial consumer education in our country. Thirdly, in order to make the financial consumers has more ways to protect their interests; it should establish a diversified, multi-level dispute resolution mechanism. At last, in order to make the financial consumers has a fair, voluntary situation to choose the financial products and services; it should improve the information disclosure system of the financial industry. Overall, Our county’s legal research about financial consumers is still at an early stage. We need to focus on restore financial consumers’confidence to financial markets as soon as possible. We could modify the existing law to learn from the experience of developed countries. In order to protect the financial consumers’ interests and maintain a healthy and stable financial markets.