NDLI: Errare humanum est: Financial Literacy in European Consumer Credit Law

Content Provider	Springer Nature Link
Author	Mak, Vanessa Braspenning, Jurgen
Copyright Year	2012
Abstract	Examples of financial mistakes made by consumers lend support to the view that systematic mistakes of consumers exist in the EU credit market and that service providers respond strategically to these by redesigning their products. This paper seeks to determine how existing regulation can be improved to ensure consumer protection. Using insights from behavioural economics, this paper argues that financial literacy—that is, knowledge and understanding of complex financial products and skills to navigate the financial market—as a cornerstone for European financial consumer law is problematic. Current regulation is based primarily on information provision to consumers, which should enable them to make appropriate decisions about the risks and suitability of financial products. Although behavioural economics does not necessarily require legal intervention to take other forms than the introduction of information duties, the type of intervention is dependent on the design and needs of a particular market. The EU consumer credit market, in our view, demands more than the current regulation offers in terms of consumer protection. In particular, behavioural studies reveal that consumers generally do not have a sufficient level of financial literacy in order to enable them to make informed, rational decisions. Moreover, behavioural biases have a distorting influence on consumer decision making. The law as it stands, therefore, seems ill-equipped to offer protection to consumers and to prevent them from rash and bad decision making. Reviewing existing regulation and case law, we propose that in the EU law, the Consumer Credit Directive and the Markets in Financial Instruments Directive require updating in order to offer sufficient protection to vulnerable groups of consumers who, on average, have low levels of financial literacy.
Starting Page	307
Ending Page	332
Page Count	26
File Format	PDF
ISSN	01687034
Journal	Journal of Consumer Policy
Volume Number	35
Issue Number	3
e-ISSN	15730700
Language	English
Publisher	Springer US
Publisher Date	2012-05-30
Publisher Place	Boston
Access Restriction	One Nation One Subscription (ONOS)
Subject Keyword	Financial literacy Consumer credit law MiFID Consumer Credit Directive Commercial Law Marketing Economic Policy Social Sciences
Content Type	Text
Resource Type	Article
Subject	Economics and Econometrics Business, Management and Accounting

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1	Ministry of Education (GoI), Department of Higher Education	Sanctioning Authority	https://www.education.gov.in/ict-initiatives
2	Indian Institute of Technology Kharagpur	Host Institute of the Project: The host institute of the project is responsible for providing infrastructure support and hosting the project	https://www.iitkgp.ac.in
3	National Digital Library of India Office, Indian Institute of Technology Kharagpur	The administrative and infrastructural headquarters of the project	Dr. B. Sutradhar bsutra@ndl.gov.in
4	Project PI / Joint PI	Principal Investigator and Joint Principal Investigators of the project	Dr. B. Sutradhar bsutra@ndl.gov.in Prof. Saswat Chakrabarti will be added soon
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