ECRC Infobrief Nr. 9, August 2007 erschienen.
Kurz vor der Brüsseler Konferenz ist der neue Infobrief des Netzwerkes für Verantwortliche Kreditvergabe erschienen. Er gibt Hintergrundinformationen zur Konferenz, Themen, Teilnehmer und Referenten, berichtet über die weiteren Pläne der Koalition für 2008 und 2009, die Erfolge, die Diskussionen sowie über einige Beobachtungen zur Bankenkultur in Europa. |
NOCH EINEN MONAT BIS ZUR BRÜSSELER KONFERENZ!
42 Tage sind es noch bis zu dem nächsten internationalen Treffen, dass acht nationale Konferenzen vorbereitet haben. Es wird ein Treffen der Nutzer und Interessenten an Finanzdienstleistugnen sein, dass mit Vertretern aus aller Welt bis Japan, Südafrika, Canada und Südamerika den europäischen Organisationen die Möglichkeit des Dialogs untereinander und diesmal mit einem verstärkt repräsentierten Bankensektor ermöglicht. Konferenzsprachen sind Englisch und Französisch. Deutsche Beiträge werden ins Englische übersetzt.60 Referenten, die alle wichtigen Gruppen repräsentieren, habe ihre Teilnahme zugesagt darunter neben der Anbieterseite und ihren Verbänden Verbraucherverbände, Wohlfahrtsverbände, Alternativfinanzierer, Wissenschaftler udn Politiker. Allen soll schon hier für ihr Engagement gedankt werden. Insbesondere gilt unserem Dank aber auch den Sponsoren Citibank, Deutsche Bank und GE Money, ohne die das Treffen, das wieder ohne öffentliche Subventionen auskommen muss, finanziell nicht darstellbar wäre. Dass Kritik notwendig und ein Element der Innovation ist, haben noch längst nicht alle Anbieter in Europa begriffen. (Wir werden unten darüber mehr berichten) Bisher sind etwa 120 Teilnehmer registriert. (Tragen Sie sich jetzt für unsere verbleibenden Plätze ein).
TEILNEHMER
You will meet people form all EU members states and the USA but also from Brazil, South Africa, Japan, Canada, Albania. This diversity has induced us to put participants into a more active role. They will be equipped with an electronic voting device which sorted according to sector and origin will allow to express opinions on various issues discussed on the podium. Especially our first day will be organised like a parliamentary discussion in which stakeholders in financial services from many countries will tell us about their concerns, actions and successes in a kind of parliamentary hearing. Those who held a conference since 2006 will shortly report about its contents the other will follow in the hearing. All of them are invited to give us this information in advance in a written form so that we can post it onto the Internet in different languages. The reports will be short and arranged in the following way: a) information on the conference on responsible credit (if appropriate) b) What are the most pressing problems in credit and debt in your country? c) Who is active to cope with these problems? d) What kind of solutions have been developed e) What do you expect from an international network for your country? If your country is not represented on the podium we would appreciate if you could provide us with such a paper in one of the four languages of our websites (en,de,fr,it,es) so that our information becomes more complete.
This time we can announce the active participation of the European Commission (DG Market and DG Social Policy) as well as the Economic and Social Committee, the European Parliament and from the Council. Our Round Table on the Implementation of the two important Directives on Consumer Credit and Payment Systems, which will be introduced by the findings of a recent research on the procedures in which these Directives were created, could initiate another round of discussions at the national level showing the challenges, loopholes as well as threats these European legislation poses to all of us. Is maximum harmonisation the new drive or will national culture play a more prominent role?
PROGRAMM
The afternoon of the first day will be dedicated to the most pressing events: Overindebtedness and Insolvency, Credit Card Credit, Financial Education, Scoring, Microlending and Non-Performing Loans including Credit Insurance. We can assure that the most knowledgeable persons from the different sectors will be there and an equilibrium between information and opinions will be sought.
The second day will be dedicated to ethical and moral principles in financial services and its relation to law, marketing and collective action. While state, industry and consumers seem to favour principles over the law its function and use has to be investigated. Within our workgroups we want to be more concrete on the ECRC principles in relation to existing law, the requirements of the implementation process of the Directives. This discussion will continue where alternative types of financial institutions discuss what form would be the most appropriate for corporate social responsibility before we will have some voting on the future of ECRC, its conferences, websites, structure and activities.
But above all meeting interesting people, networking and information should be a core interest for this conference. This is why with all needs to save we still offer the evening event with a Romanic lunch and a magnificent Jazz-Band which hopefully will also lead again to some dancing in this marvellous last century cinema palace. We will mark the languages you speak or understand onto your sticker so that others can either address you or ask you to translate for them. Globalization should not become a business of English speaking experts but concerns us all.
If you want to profit from the Brussels event to meet pairs from other countries or if you have special project or activity which you would like to discuss with interested people we can help you by publishing these events and providing a restaurant on Thursday evening or a room in the conference centre on Friday morning. Just tell us if we can be of help.
BANKEN UND DER SOZIAL DIALOG IN EUROPA
The Brussels conference is also a mirror reflecting attitudes in the banking business. Private American and German banks seem to be much more open to a critical dialogue with stakeholders than English and French or in general public banks. While in the UK bankers together with the State (DTI, OFT, FSA) seem to have defined an own social policy approach strongly related to free market ideologies (financial capacity, consumer information, competition and education) stakeholders can either play a part in it or are largely ignored. In the Netherlands the English influence is already visible. In Switzerland the two giants do not bother with small problems. They look at investors and understand corporate social responsibility as a form of providing ethical consciousness on a more abstract and less costly level. In France bankers seem to be convinced that they alone can define and publish what is social and responsible so that a dialogue is more understood as a process of teaching the public modernity and what social responsibility should be. For the rest they point to alternative institutions and the state. This comes close to the European Savingsbank Sector who assumes that they have a chartered responsibility and can discuss this among each other and with leading politicians.
We have much sympathy with such social conservative attitudes that accept responsibility and effectively tries to observe ethical standards with obvious results for the poor. But we are afraid that this model will not persist and after its gradual or sudden disappearance (like it had been the case with privatisation of financial services of the post offices) there may just remain an ethical desert. We have to think ahead and replace fading (national) state authority through responsible market forces in the globalization process.
We are therefore also very disappointed that the two monopolists of the Credit Card Industry VISA and MasterCharge whose policies offer the perhaps most feared form of a future in overindebtedness and dependency decided not to discuss this with us on our conference. Given their nearly unrecognised political success with the liberalisation of the credit card credit market and their unwillingness to look for answers to the rising credit card credit burden in overindebtedness in the UK, USA and countries like Brazil, India or South Africa NGOs have perhaps to become more expressive with this kind of immaterial institutions that exist in the form of an abstract banking sector with no own bones in it but enormous appetite. (VISA is an “association” of more than 21.000 banks, it is sponsor of the Olympic Games since 1986 and issues 1.2 billion credit cards which provide perhaps most of the small credit which in this form has partly devastating effects on the social well-being of millions of debtors. (The biggest New York debt counselling agency BUCCS welcomes visitors with a giant bottle of cut credit cards from overindebted consumers) Our podium discussion as well as the inaugural statement will point to some of these challenges and question the way the legislator treats this collective form of capitalist money interests with its headquarters in London.
DIE NÄCHSTEN KONFERENZEN
After altogether 17 national conferences which have generated enormous knowledge and political discussion in financial services and while we are still preparing the 2007 Brussels meeting we already have to think about the future. There are first the national conferences. The German conference 2008 is already fixed for the 23rd and 24th of May, 2008 in Hamburg. The English conference will be held this time in Cardiff. The Washington conference is as usual in March 2008 and NVVK will celebrate its 50th anniversary in Amsterdam on November 8, 2007 where ECRC will also be presented. The Berlin conference of the Law & Society Association in July 2007 got about 30 marvellous scientific contributions from India, China, Japan Australia, Brazil, South Africa, USA, Canada and many European states on consumer overindebtedness and the law. A selection of papers will be published in 2008 and outstanding speakers like professor Gregory Squire, Tony Williams and Iain Ramsay will introduce their findings into the Brussels conference. The close collaboration between ECRC and those scientists who are concerned with our issues will be deepened in the future and we hope to be able to bring together practice and theory so that our stress for responsible credit can be more effective and new regulations get the necessary input. We are really happy to help with competent speakers for national events as we did during the last period.
The next Brussels conference is scheduled for 2009 as far as iff’s capacity is concerned. But this does not mean that there will be no ECRC conference in 2008. We urge those who plan a national event to declare their own conference as the next central ECRC conference. This would get our central conference rotating every second year through Europe. We assume that iff could help with sponsoring and organising such an event. It may even be an opportunity for those who still have difficulties to finance it on their own especially as the EU DG Sanco offers networking support for 2008 if a request has been made until September 25 of this year. If you plan to shoulder such an international event please contact us best before the Brussels conference. We need more than one candidate to be able to choose.
RECHTSSETZUNG IN EUROPA ZUM THEMA KREDIT UND ÜBERSCHULDUNG
The most striking event as regards our principles of responsible credit are the EC(2007)8 of the Committee of Ministers to Member States on Legal Solutions to Debt Problems (adopted by the Committee of Ministers on 20 June 2007 at the 999bis Meeting of the Ministers’ Depu, recommendation CM,ties). It covers most of our principles and asks overwhelmingly solutions which are very much in line with our commitments. Financial education has to focus on consumer rights and not only adapt consumers to the system. Credit should be responsible. Lenders should participate in the development of prevention and rehabilitation for overindebted consumers. Families should be protected, guarantors should get equal rights, debt collection should be limited with regard to the adverse social effects, discharge should be generalised in Europe, independent debt advice should be developed and guaranteed in all coun-tries. We have translated these principles into German and published also the English and French ver-sion. We have invited the European Council to speak about it at our Brussels conference in the Work-shop on Principles.
The hearing at the Economic and Social Committee on June 25th brought forward a statement on the prevention of overindebtedness in Europe which will be passed by the end of this year. It can serve as a policy paper for national implementation of the Directives. As far as the Consumer Credit Directive is concerned there is some confusion about the procedure. We heard from the Commission that different from the earlier statement the Directive has not yet passed the Council. It is still not available due to problems in translation but we hopefully get it in all languages before our conference starts. The European parliament seems to be divided on its attitude. The economic and social committee will discuss it in the second reading and some say that deputies are sceptical about its necessity especially as its regulation has remained so vague and with little impact on those problems the deputies are confronted at home. Some say that the deputies are just tired of it and will pass it as quick as possible (which would shed a strange light on our European democracy)
As to the Payment Directive the Commission has clarified that it truly opens the continental European consumer credit market to all kind of finance companies who only have to hide their questionable small loans in a credit card which they can mail to the customers. Local and small banks who are not able to profit from this easy way of credit will suffer from this market entrance which gradually will make customers dependent and unfit for ordinary instalment or overdraft credit just as this is already the case in the US. Many bankers revealed in our discussions that they have not been aware of this fact which we already mentioned two years ago but with no reactions. The misrepresentation of this Directive as a means to facilitate cross border payments instead of promoting credit cards has truly worked well. In the national implementation process where now the bank supervisory acts have to be amended some parliaments may be surprised how little they still have to say in their country.
NETZWERKE BILDEN
In some countries the ECRC has brought together NGOs which in the past did not see each others as partner working on the same subject. Networks are useful for political effectiveness and the exchange of information. Thus International Association of Insolvency Regulators is such a network. Its Australian member wrote to us: “The IAIR has existed for a number of years now. It is an association of Government organisations responsible for bankruptcy policy and regulation. It provides a useful network for Government agencies with this responsibility to share information and ideas. There is an annual meeting and the association also prepares comparative reports on issues of interest to members. There are currently over 20 countries who are members of the association. So far, there are very few European countries who are members of IAIR (only the UK, Ireland, Finland, Czech Republic, Latvia, Russia and Serbia). The IAIR is always looking to expand its membership and would be very pleased to increase participation from Europe. The next meeting is in Bangkok from 2-5 September 2007.” (www.insolvencyreg.org) We also know about an active network of consumer ombuds of the Scandinavian states who regularly meet. Such networks develop by national and local initiative which is preferable to the creation of supranational networks top down which by selection and financing are too close to supranational political bodies with own interests.
UNSERE PRINZIPIEN
The recommendation of the European Council proves that our principles of responsible credit are developing into a yardstick for regulation and product development in consumer and mortgage credit.
Some of our members have started to initiate a worldwide discussion on the way the principles on responsible credit could be made so operational that they can serve for national regulation. The first initiative concerns the right of withdrawal and its relation to free choice. Economist, lawyers and practitioners are discussing an alternative to this quite inefficient and disturbing element of the new Directive as well as some national legislations which is mostly more used to justify free distribution of predatory products than it has effects in practice. The reasons are analysed by using insights of behavioural economics on default options as well as comparative studies on the law. A new model is emerging As this is still an internal discussion we have reserved a closed area on the responsible-credit websites. But the authors from UK, Canada, Belgium and Germany invite others to participate. The whole discussion will soon be made available. Next issues to be discussed will be a unified EU consumer bankruptcy system which offers creditors as well as debtors the same opportunities in the common market which is presently falsified by systems that reach from unlimited prosecution in Spain to immediate discharge in France which has already created a bankruptcy tourism.
UNSERE WEBSITES UND IHRE ZUKUNFT EINER ALLGEMEINEN DISKUSSION
Have you recognised the “Input” button at the top of our websites? We would like to have more partners in the authoring tool. The number has at least been increased including now a team from France, Belgium, Netherlands, Germany, Italy, UK, US and Canada. The Italian website is no an Italian, Spanish, Portuguese website and we are trying to get our Brazilian friends to contribute all in their respective language. This offer is also valid for all other languages. Give us your text in the language of your country with just an Header in one of our Website languages so that we have a starting point. The next step will be that more people dedicate an hour per month to translation which will then be checked by others who have this language as their mother tongue.
We have started to offer a section on best practices but the material is still with us. We will hopefully get more information in the future so that from 2008 on we are able to nominate prize winners for responsible credit.
UR – August 2007 |
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40016 |
| Autor(en): |
iff |
| Erscheinungsdatum: |
20.08.07 |
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Erzeugt: 08.08.07. Letzte Änderung: 20.08.07.
Information zum Urheberrecht der angezeigten Inhalte kann beim Institut für Finanzdienstleistungen erfragt werden. Aus fehlenden Angaben kann kein Recht zur freien Nutzung der Inhalte abgeleitet werden. |
