76
ucts to a customer if they do not match the
customer’s investor profile. Each year a test
must be done to see if a customer’s investment
products match his profile.
In the framework of the simplification of prod-
ucts, great progress was made via the morato-
rium on the commercialisation of especially
complicated financial products. The financial
sector has voluntarily endorsed the morato-
rium, which obliges it not to commercialise
any structured products that are defined as es-
pecially complicated by the Financial Services
and Markets Authority (FSMA).
Loan products
The Consumer Credit Protection Act imposes
the use of the “JKP” (
jaarlijks kostenpercent-
age
or annual percentage rate of charge, which
denotes how much a loan costs on an annual
basis). This provides the consumer with the
possibility to compare various offers easily
and prevents him from being confronted with
“
unclear calculation keys”.
The legislation also provides that advertise-
ments about loans (in which an interest rate
is not mentioned) must be accompanied with
the message “Pay attention: borrowing money
also costs money”.
Both for corporate loans and for private loans,
a code of conduct exists in which transpar-
ency is stated as one of the values.
The 2004 the Code of conduct for lend-
ing was signed between banks and busi­
nesses
8
.
1
Improvement of transparency is one
of the most important assignments of the
Business Financing dialogue platform, which
8.
The Code of Conduct can be viewed on
www.financieringvanondernemingen.be.
“
According to a study made by OIVO-
CRIOC at the end of 2011, consumers
have a mixed perception of banks
that is both positive and negative:
positive, as for accessibility and
counseling; negative as for costs and
transparency. So, the banking
sector has to go on making efforts...”
Anaïs Deville, OIVO-CRIOC, October 2012
3.
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GOOD GOVERNANCE