Research On Social Responsibility Of Commercial Banks

Corporate social responsibility is not a new topic, and scholars both at home and abroad have been carrying out a thorough study of its theory and practice; Generally speaking, it is thought to be a responsibility of economy, ethical, legislation and social charity to their share holders, clients, government, community, environment etc. interest related people, and it is no exception for commercial bank as a special corporation. Many commercial banks also release their own social responsibility, and they emphasize on its social responsibility in terms of economy interest, environmental protection and charity in their report; some banks even form their own characteristic such as HSBC, ABC etc. In practical, bank people also explore their social responsibility with full efforts, and reach some international standard such as equator principle etc.Although commercial banks have made great achievements to fulfill their social responsibility in above aspects, and they also initiative to take economic, legal and moral etc. social responsibility at least in theory, they only definite their social responsibility in view of general theory of corporate social responsibility; from the very beginning to the end, they did not mention commercial banks’ special social responsibility as a financial corporation, which is not good for commercial banks to confront their social responsibility in writer’s view. With more and more calls and unsatisfactory from society especially after the baptism of the international financial crisis, it is necessary to re-examine the standards of commercial banks’ social responsibility in different perspectives. Commercial banks are corporation, but they are different with normal operational corporation entity; their special characteristic of currency, huge negative externalities and reputation capital effect mechanism determines their special social responsibility.After reading the existing research of scholars both at home and abroad, the writer raises three layers of society responsibility of commercial bank, that is,1) Core society responsibility to protect individual (financial consumer) for a stable financial environment;2) social responsibility to the state, which is to support state’s policy on economy and environment, and pay attention to economic structure adjustment to increase national economic growth and create more jobs etc.;3) the highest level of social responsibility, which is to participate social charity to improve social welfare and people’s livelihood. In this thesis, the writer does not apply the existing standards of corporate social responsibility, and here are two reasons:1) economic and legal responsibility is inner duty of commercial bank, and its social responsibility is not well reflected since it emphasize on the contributions except economic interest; And there is no fixed definition between moral and social charitable responsibility, which is not good for commercial banks to confront their social responsibility.2) Commercial banks place too much emphasis on economic interest, which results in interest conflicts, and ignore even intentional violate financial consumer’s interest.In practical, commercial banks have not well deal with the relationships of the three layers of social responsibility, and pursue interest greedily even to violate consumer’s interest, which is attend to trifles and neglect the essentials really. By comparison, commercial banks take more social responsibility in the second and third layer, and it is the most important thing for commercial banks to protect financial consumer’s interest. Besides, the writer also analyzes the reasons and necessity to protect financial consumers through Asymmetric Information Theory, Reputation Theory and "Double Peaks" Theory.It is still a long way for commercial banks to well take the responsibility to protect financial consumers. By building a three parties game model of commercial banks, supervision department, and financial consumers, the writer comes to the conclusion that lacking of a well-established protection mechanism is the main reason for financial consumer’ interest damage. After international financial crisis, world economy organizations and developed countries make a lot of efforts to explorer valuable experiences for protecting financial consumer, which provides a good reference for our country consumer financial protection.Finally, the writer constructs the realization of commercial banks social responsibility approach in three aspects, that is, a unified supervision system, self-discipline frame of commercial banks to protect financial consumers, and self-protection of financial consumers; a unified supervision system is an essential soft environment, while self-discipline of commercial banks to take the responsibility of protecting financial consumers is the crucial point, and it is indispensable for financial consumers to learn to protect themselves. Only if the three parties work together can guarantee that financial consumers’ interest is not to be damaged.