Government to create new powers to review claims in financial sector, exempting courts

The Council of Ministers on Tuesday approved the creation of an independent Financial Client Protection Authority to centralize the grievance divisions of the sector’s three supervisors: the Bank of Spain, the CNMV and the General Directorate of Insurance. The new body intends to become the governing body for conflicts between financial entities and their clients, which will be one of the sectors that receives the most complaints. In this way, the government intends to reduce the litigation that has plagued the financial sector in recent years and led to the collapse of the courts.

Until now, each supervisor had a complaints department. Under the new rule, these sections were merged into one. Vice President Nadia Calvino told a news conference after the Council of Ministers that financial products were becoming increasingly complex and affecting not just one supervisor but several. For example, he noted that one of the main aspects that the new head will be involved in will be crypto assets.

The main news about the current state of these claim services is that their decisions are not binding. In other words, if the client was right in the claim, the bank was not obliged to comply with that opinion. Now, the decisions of the new independent government must be met by the entities on all the requirements that are less than 20,000 euros. The aspiration is that grievances should be answered within a maximum of 90 days and lawyers or attorneys will not be required to file these grievances.

The body is chaired by a committee consisting of three supervisors and the Treasury General Directorate. The President and Vice-President are appointed by the Council of Ministers for a term of six years. Its operation will be financed by financial entities, with the approval of a commission of 250 euros for each request. In this way, Calvino notes, there is an attempt to encourage conflicts that arise in the sector in order to resolve, before this authority, in the service of the subjects’ customers. In addition, a mechanism will be created so that if the reason is not established, the bank will not file a lawsuit. Finally, the government will have an advisory committee, which will be a deliberative body consisting of the president and vice-president of the government, with the exception of nine members representing the Consumers and Consumers Council, employers in the financial sector, and representatives of autonomous communities and cities.

The bill applies to all financial institutions: credit institutions, investment service companies, insurance companies, financial lending institutions, participatory financing platforms, lenders and credit intermediaries, payment and electronic money institutions or so-called. . It will be a free service for customers.

Thus, the government solves one of the irreparable problems it has had over the years in the financial sector. The creation of this new government led by Nadia Calvinio has been on the ministry’s agenda for a long time. The initiative was proposed by the previous government of the People’s Party and the president of the executive branch, Pedro Sanchez, who elected him in 2018 with the intention that the project be implemented in 2019. However, these plans were delayed by calling for universal elections. That year and, later, the spread of the pandemic that prompted the Ministry of Economy to focus on crisis response measures. Consumer organizations have for some time been demanding that the creation of these powers be expedited to avoid possible misuse of the financial sector and to avoid additional costs for clients in making claims. What was approved this Tuesday is a preliminary bill open to public consultation that will last five weeks. The bill will then be drafted and again to be approved by the Council of Ministers for further final processing in Cortes. According to Calvinio, this will happen in the second half of the year.

The Vice President noted that the presentation of this new body completes the system of claims that consumers can benefit from. First, you can turn to the organization’s customer service. If this path does not meet the needs of the customers, now a path of new government is opened, the opinions of which will be binding and the banks must meet. Finally, there is the alternative of the court way.

Bank employers this Tuesday filed claims against this model. The outgoing president of the Spanish Banking Association (AEB), Jose Maria Roldan, who handed over the baton to Alejandra Kindelan on Tuesday, rejected this model in comparison to the difference between the Bank of Spain and CNMV. “The current model is better suited to European practice and the new one will be more Anglo-Saxon,” he said. Roldan argued that the creation of new organisms would lead to “procedural friction.” The manager defended the rate of 250 euros that banks have to pay, saying that these rates are “transferring the cost of public services to those who use this cost, which makes people think that it should not be banks [los que la asuman] “Because they are being questioned in the process.”