UN Guidelines on Consumer Protection
Chairpersons’ Meetings
Working Group on Financial Services Meetings
SUMMARY OF THE MEETINGS
Participants:
-
National consumer protection authorities: Brazil, Costa Rica, Nigeria,
Swaziland, Tanzania, Zambia
-
International
organizations:
CARICOM, EC, UNCTAD
NGOs/Business Associations/civil society organization: CI, CUTS,
National Consumer Tribunal – South
Africa, NGOOption Consommateur – Canada
ILA
International Protection of Consumer,
India,
, World
Federation of
Insurance Intermediaries
-
Academia: University of Delhi,
ZHAW School of Management and Law
-
Zurich
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Summary of the
1.
meetings
:
Opening of the Working Group on Financial Services meetings:
Graham Mott, from the Competition and Consumer Policies Branch of
UNCTAD, chaired the meetings of the Working Group on Financial Services and
welcomed participants to this Working Group following the work programme
proposed in the Second Ad Hoc Expert Group
July 2013.
Meeting on Consumer Protection of
Apologies were given on behalf of Working Group Chair, Dr Sothi
Rachagan, who was unable to participate in this set of meetings.
The following agenda was presented for the
A.
meetings
:
Presentation of the Background, Work programme and Expected Output of
the Working
Group on Other Issues.
B.
Overview of the questionnaire and accompanying instructions.
C.
Questions & Answers.
2.
Presentation of the Background, Work programme and Expected Output of
the Working Group on
Financial Services
Graham Mott thanked participants for providing their input in this Working
Group. The goal of this group is to provide concrete proposals for the secretariat
Report to the VII UN Review Conference on the issue of the United Nations
Guidelines on Consumer Protection (hereinafter UNGCP), and the availability of their
revision.
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In order to gather all opinions
on the issues to be included in the revision of
the UNGCP (other than E-commerce,
Financial Services and Implementation which
have specific working groups),
the
secretariat
UNCTAD
prepared a detailed
questionnaire and its accompanying instructions circulated in advance. (Please see
excel document: UNGCP_Questionnaire
WG
Financial Services;
and
the
pdf
document: UNGCP_Instructions WG Financial Services)
Participants are kindly asked to provide their views on the other issues to be
considered
by filling the said questionnaire and sending it to the Chair of the
Working Group (srachagan@gmail.com
(graham.mott@unctad.org
receiving contributions is
)
and
to
the
UNCTAD
secretariat
and arnau.izaguerri@unctad.org). The deadline for
Tuesday 15 April. The first draft of this report is expected
for June 2014.
The secretariat
will assist the Chairs
in drafting
contain concrete recommendations for a new chapter(s)
a draft
on
report,
which will
financial services (June
2014). This report will be circulated among consumer experts, whose inputs will be
contained in a final report. This
UNCTAD secretariat
final r
eport will be issued under the authority of the
, so participants are not engaging the official views of their States
by answering the questionnaire, but rather participating at the expert level.
Consumer protection experts will be invited to discuss the said report during a
Preparatory
Meeting
(
December 2014 or January 2015) for the VII UN Review
Conference (November 2015).
3.
Overview of the questionnaire and accompanying instructions
Graham Mott summarized the expected output of the questionnaires
circulated among participants. Its aim is to
financial services t
identify and develop issues
relating
to
hat will be proposed for inclusion in the revision of the UNGCP. In
order to better take stock of the
interests
and
priorities
of
participants
in
this
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Working Group, a questionnaire in
the
form of an Excel document has been
circulated. The final list of issues that will be considered for this Working Group will
be decided once expert’s contributions are processed. Participants are also asked to
include other issues that are not listed in
the
questionnaire.
In the questionnaire, the issues discussed in the Second Ad Hoc Expert Group
Meeting on Consumer Protection are displayed in rows, while columns contain
specific
questions to every corresponding issue. This questionnaire also tries to
present the most relevant international instruments (namely the
level
Principles
revision
of
on
the
Financial
UNGCP.
Consumer
Protection
Participants
are
(2012))
as
encouraged
OECD G-20 High-
inspiration
to
for
portray
the
their
national/regional experiences. The Questionnaire is indeed long and ambitious, so an
exhaustive answer is not expected. Instead, participants are asked to answer to their
best knowledge and only in those areas they feel comfortable. Participants are
encouraged to portray their national/regional experiences and signal their needs on
capacity building activities and technical cooperation. For more precision, please see
the
document UNGCP_Instructions WG Financial Services.
Questions & Answers
4.
The
floor
was then opened for comments from participants and responses
included the following:
•
It was reiterated that the secretariat and the Chair of the Working Group
would formulate the first draft of the report. Stakeholders would then be
asked for comments on this draft.
•
Participants were reminded of the use of the further comments (last column)
and further issues (last rows) to the questionnaire, in order to highlight any
issues they felt were missing from the questionnaire and to express views not
covered by the questions, respectively.
•
Participants may add as many further issues to the questionnaire as they wish.
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However, it was noted by the secretariat that only issues with a supportive
consensus would be taken forward and so it is unlikely that all suggested
y be taken up.
issues would ultimatel
N.B. A
ll participants are invited to send their comments/corrections to this summary
or to the questionnaire to the UNCTAD secretariat (graham.mott@unctad.org and
arnau.izaguerri@unctad).
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