Research On The Mechanism Of Protection Of Financial Consumer's Rights

At the end of 2007,the U.S.subprime mortgage crisis brought devastating losses to the financial industry and world economy.The crisis also caused significant harm to investors.In the wake of the crisis,countries started to reconsider their financial system and government regulation,and undertook reforms in the areas of legislation,financial regulation,and mechanisms of resolving financial disputes.Special attention has been paid to protecting the rights of financial consumers.With China's booming economy,the available financial products and services have become larger and more complex,enlarging the information gap between financial institutions and consumers when it comes to contract signing.The inequality is exacerabated by the fact that financial institutions have stronger financial capacity and professional knowledge.Certain consumer rights are severely infringed upon in China,which demonstrates the deficiencies in the protection of financial consumer rights and interests.Starting from the jurisprudential basis of providing financial consumers special protection,the paper analyses the formal equality in modern civil law and the substantive equality in contemporary civil law from the perspective of private law.The author find that although financial consumers and financial institutions,the two parties involve in financial consumption,seem to be equal,that is,meeting the requirements of formal equality,they are actually not equal to each other due to the gaps between them in terms of economic strength and expertise.Therefore,we need to provide favorable protection for the consumers.Then the paper conduct analysis from the perspective of public law and find that if we simply protect financial consumers with private laws,the order of financial industry will definitely be damaged.Hence,we need to use public power to regulate and bind the behaviors of financial institutions and provide favorable protection for financial consumers.Only in this way can we maintain a stable development of the financial market.On the basis of the foregoing analysis,the paper reviews the Chinese legislation and regulation in protecting financial consumer rights.The paper addresses the issues and problems in this legal area,particularly with regards to the deficiencies in legislation,uniformed institutional oversight,and channels for consumers to vindicate their rights.Additionally,the paper discusses the legislative history and institutional protection of financial consumer rights in several sophisticated legal systems including the U.S.,the U.K.and Japan.Finally,the paper provides policy recommendations by comparing the challenges that China is faced with and the lessons learned from the abovementioned countries in the areas of legislation,financial regulation and mechanisms of protecting the rights of financial consumers.