The recent expansion of digital financial products leads to severe consumer protection issues such as fraud and scams. As these potentially decrease trust in digital services, especially in developing countries, avoiding victimization has become an important policy objective. In an online...

This note provides: (1) an overview of new manifestations of consumer risks that are significant and cross-cutting across four key fintech products: digital microcredit, P2PL, investment-based crowdfunding, and e-money; and (2) examples of emerging regulatory approaches to target such risks....

To help German households and firms with exploding energy costs, the German government is about to implement a new transfer scheme called "gas price brake." A unique feature of this energy price relief measure is that both households and the industry receive a transfer that increases in one's...

This paper discusses first the role of mobile money accounts to enhance financial inclusion towards vulnerable groups in developing countries in the light of recent empirical evidence. Second, we explore the role of regulation to address risks to consumers and the financial system arising from...

In 2019, the Australian Government invested the Australian Securities and Investments Commission with a new Product Intervention Power, enabling it to intervene directly in the market for financial products to reduce the risk of consumer harm. ASIC made its first Product Intervention Order in...

This paper shows that the provision of consumer rights can decrease welfare when some consumers remain ignorant of these rights. We find that consumers uninformed about a mandated warranty demand excessively safe products in some circumstances. In other circumstances, uninformed consumers buy...

This paper seeks to ascertain the influence of financial literacy and financial consumer protection on digital financial access. The objectives of the study were to find out the effect of financial literacy on digital monetary access, and to find out the effect of f consumer financial protection...

We present results from a first ever representative phone survey that measures consumer grievances in Indian retail financial markets. We find that for every com- plaint on banking and payments that makes it to the regulatory system, there are 60 grievances that do not get voiced. In insurance...

This study aims to analyze the juridical review of consumer protection from the perspective of the Job Creation Act and how the effectiveness of existing dispute resolutions resolves these problems. Technological developments change the order of values and human life, one of which is economic...

The Israeli Supervisor of Banks is in charge of two regulatory goals: Maintaining the stability of the banking system ("prudential regulation") and consumer protection. On the face of it, these two goals are consistent and complete each other. However, in certain situations they may conflict,...

Online commerce has grown but consumer law has not kept pace. In the United States, legal protections have become inadequate in light of the realities of common cross-border transacting practices as facilitated by the internet. Technologies have empowered merchants to outpace consumers, their...

The Discussion Paper, intended to guide the ACCC toward the recommendations in the ongoing Digital Platform Services Inquiry, suggests consideration of a wide variety of sweeping changes in Australian competition-law enforcement and the enactment of additional regulations in regard to social...

Data protection law has been one of the intensely discussed legal domains in relation to new data technologies such as Big Data and Machine Learning. Arguments have even been made that due to its wide scope (both material and personal), it may apply to everything and everyone. However, criticism...

The Federal Trade Commission’s initiative to use rulemaking powers to target “unfair methods of competition” under the FTC Act is part of a broader package of dramatic recent changes in antitrust enforcement policy and practice by FTC leadership. These changes, which have rejected the...

The EU has had a significant impact on the regulation of private relationships between traders and consumers, but this has been without differentiating between those situations which involve a cross-border element, and those which are purely domestic. This paper queries whether this ‘one size...

On October 25, 2021, in a 3-to-2 vote, strictly along party lines, the Federal Trade Commission (“FTC”) announced a major policy shift in how the agency will review and settle mergers. Going forward, all parties who agree to a merger remedy order, including a divestiture, must also agree...

The most fundamental challenge in consumer protection law lies in the information asymmetry that exists between merchants and consumers. Merchants typically know far more about their products and services than consumers do, and this imbalance threatens the fairness of consumer contracts.However,...

This study seeks to analyze the effects of over the top service model regulation of the Nigerian Communications Commission on consumers’ protection in North-Western Nigeria by finding out what extent would be licensing OTT service providers impact consumers’ data protection and privacy, and...

Advertisements can be factual, sometimes annoying and occasionally funny. In a competitive world they are all jostling for our attention. Since an advertisement has the potential to persuade people into commercial transactions that they might otherwise avoid, the information provided in an...

We show that financial advisors recommend more costly products to female clients, based on minutes from about 27,000 real-world advisory meetings and client portfolio data. Funds recom-mended to women have higher expense ratios controlling for risk, and women less often receive rebates on...

We show that financial advisors recommend more costly products to female clients, based on minutes from about 27,000 real-world advisory meetings and client portfolio data. Funds recommended to women have higher expense ratios controlling for risk, and women less often receive rebates on upfront...

The emergence of the Internet as a commercialization method has offered organizations many opportunities. However, when buyers want to execute a transaction online, a certain distrust typically accompanies the need to provide personal data. To address this problem, assurance seals have been...

Misselling is the sale of financial services that do not meet the needs of consumers or in the manner or the way they are sold, which is not appropriate to the nature of those services. The first aim of this article is to characterise the misselling phenomenon and present the most important...