An Analysis Of The Appropriateness Obligation Of China’s Commercial Banks

The market for financial products sold by China’s commercial banks is large and fast-growing,and the financial products issued by them are becoming more complex and professional in structure and type.Along with this,there are more and more financial consumer disputes between commercial banks and financial consumers,especially disputes over appropriateness obligations.The adequacy obligation has a good effect in preventing financial risks and resolving financial transaction disputes,and it has been well developed in developed countries outside the region.The suitability obligations of China’s commercial banks specifically include three major items: understanding products,understanding customers and appropriate matching.The United States takes agency theory,fiduciary duty theory and signboard theory as the legal basis of appropriateness obligations,and China should further use the principle of good faith as the legal basis of the suitability obligation of commercial banks on this basis.Compared with commercial banks,many buyers of scattered financial products have gaps in investment experience,professional level,property strength and information acquisition,and their nature is no longer suitable for characterization as investors.At present,there are legislative and judicial problems in the process of fulfilling the appropriateness obligation of China’s commercial banks.Analyze the existing problems at the legislative level from the perspective of form and content.In terms of form,there is a lack of legal aspects;Issues such as lower rank and dispersion in different sectoral regulations.In terms of content,it has a single perspective,such as only starting from financial supervision and lacking civil compensation;Principle provisions are the mainstay,poor applicability and confusion of product classification standards and other dilemmas.At the judicial level,there is a consignment model,and the legal relationship between commercial banks and financial consumers is not uniform;Unclear judgment of the standards for commercial banks to perform appropriateness obligations;The abuse of fault offsetting rule is inconsistent with the nature of civil liability borne by commercial banks after breach of the appropriateness obligation.Extraterritorial countries and regions,in the legislative provisions;Financial consumer classification and product grading are worthy of reference in China.China should reasonably position this obligation from the perspective of protecting financial consumers;Proceeding from amending the Commercial Banking Law and unifying judicial application,we will solve the problems existing in the application of this obligation and enable it to better play its role in protecting financial consumers.