MANILA, Philippines – Banks will have to abide by new consumer protection guidelines this year, the Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas said, as the measure is already being finalized and aimed to be launched in the first semester of 2014.
“We have further improved and strengthened consumer protection by formalizing a… framework against which banks will be measured or assessed,” BSP Governor Amando M. Tetangco Jr. said.
Tetangco explained the BSP will be releasing guidelines with which banks can put together their own consumer protection policies.
At the same time, banks will be assessed on a scale of one to four, with four being the highest, on how adequate their consumer protection practices are.
The rating system will be similar to CAMELS, which assesses a bank with regard to its capital adequacy, assets, management capability, earnings, liquidity and sensitivity.
“There are certain guidelines on how an adequate consumer protection framework can be organized and this year, we will start to assess banks on the basis of this framework,” Tetangco said.
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“We are working on this now. We will launch this hopefully sometime in the early part of the year,” Tetangco added.
The BSP last year announced it will be introducing a framework for the protection of customers of banks and other financial institutions.
The framework is meant to create a standard with which banks can be assessed in terms of how they handle customer complaints or how well their consumer protection policies are crafted.
Such was being done on the back of rising crimes made through cloning or stealing data from credit cards and automated teller machine (ATM) cards, among others.
The BSP earlier gave banks a copy of the draft for the consumer protection framework in order to get their inputs before finalizing the guidelines.
