In a vegetable wholesale market in Zengjing community, Jinjiang City, Fujian province, the staff of Industrial Consumer Finance Company held up billboards such as "shining eyes tight strings" and "honesty and anti-fraud" to issue paper publicity leaflets to customers, attracting a large number of customers in the market to ask. In front of the consulting service desk, the staff is explaining to a number of middle-aged and elderly citizens how to prevent online fraud and financial fraud.

In the past two years, consumer finance companies have played an important role in promoting the protection of consumer rights and interests, and the above offline anti-fraud and financial knowledge publicity activities have been rolled out in communities, neighborhoods and campuses across the country.

College students have a strong willingness to consume, but due to the lack of understanding of basic financial knowledge and consumer financial products, it is easy to impulsive consumption, fall into the trap of telecom fraud and routine loans, it is urgent to establish a correct view of financial consumption.

Recently, Xingye Consumer Finance Company also organized a financial publicity group to Fujian Normal University, Minnan Institute of Technology, Quanzhou Institute of Information Engineering and other 16 colleges and universities to carry out financial knowledge lectures, financial knowledge publicity folding, financial fun questions and answers and other activities to promote financial knowledge. According to reports, since the beginning of the semester in September, Industrial consumer Finance company has carried out more than 20 financial knowledge into the campus publicity activities, covering more than 50,000 college students.

In fact, for college students to carry out offline financial consumer education activities on campus is not just an "individual" behavior, the consumer finance industry continues to carry out all-round, multi-channel, hierarchical and normal financial education work, broaden the publicity channels, combined with the current public reading habits, actively through a vivid and diversified way to popularize financial knowledge. The Jinshang Consumer Finance Company, for example, has tried to raise public awareness this year by writing, interpreting and recording common anti-fraud routines in the form of short videos, thematic sketches, cartoons and the local traditional folk art "Lianhualuo".

Both online and offline

"Consumer rights protection is not a slogan, but a mission and responsibility engraved in our bones." The immediate consumer Finance company emphasized in its 2022 Consumer Rights Protection Report released this year.

In practice, consumer finance companies, including Home Credit Consumer Finance Company, Industrial Consumer Finance Company, Immediate consumer Finance Company, etc., have integrated consumer rights and interests protection into the whole process of daily work, and adopted both online and offline, external education and internal training to help consumers establish risk prevention awareness and enhance the awareness and ability of employees to protect consumer rights and interests.

From the perspective of the content of the education, it mainly involves the popularization of financial knowledge, rational lending, rational consumption, telecom fraud and the prevention of illegal financial activities.

From the perspective of education channels, according to incomplete statistics, 70% of consumer finance companies in the industry have adopted a combination of online and offline methods for education, and nearly 30% of consumer finance companies have adopted a pure online model for education. Online channels include the official website, APP, media platform, wechat subscription number and service number, Weibo, Xiaohongshu and other social platforms of consumer finance companies; Offline channels are mainly communities, parks, campuses, shopping malls, fairs, shops, etc.

It is worth noting that in order to expand the influence of financial knowledge publicity, a number of consumer finance companies also actively cooperate with local regulators, police departments, anti-fraud centers, for example, Industrial Consumer Finance Company in early September this year participated in the financial education promotion activities jointly organized by the People's Bank of China Fuzhou Central Branch, Fujian Banking and Insurance Regulatory Bureau and other departments; Last year, China Post Consumer Finance Company jointly with the police of Guangzhou Yuexiu District in Guangdong University of Technology to carry out the theme of "anti-fraud into the campus", to achieve the linkage between police, enterprises and schools.

It should also be noted that the number of complaints from consumer finance companies has been high, and the protection of consumer rights and interests is still a long way to go.

From the volume of complaints from non-bank institutions announced by the local banking insurance Regulatory Bureau in the first half of 2022, the number of complaints from a number of consumer finance companies is relatively high, and the number of complaints from a single institution is as high as more than 2,000, and the complaints mainly cover debt collection, fee pricing, service facilities and other aspects.

Promoting the proper handling of consumer complaints is an important part of consumer finance companies to improve service efficiency and do a good job in protecting consumers' rights and interests.

The "Notice on Further Strengthening Consumer Complaint Handling" issued by the China Banking and Insurance Regulatory Commission on September 29 requires that all institutions should integrate the protection of financial consumer rights and interests, including consumer complaint handling, into all aspects of corporate governance, strengthen the implementation and supervision mechanism of financial consumer rights and interests protection decisions, and ensure that the strategic objectives and policies of financial consumer rights and interests protection are effectively implemented.

It is understood that the Central Plains consumer finance company in order to smooth the channels of consumer complaints, the establishment of customer service phone, official wechat, official website and other direct channels, consumer needs and problems by a special person to quickly deal with and timely feedback to consumers, to ensure that customer demands are properly closed loop solution.

In the next step, consumer finance companies also need to deal with customer complaints and solve financial disputes as a key work, focus on strengthening the analysis of the causes of complaints, establish and improve various complaint-related systems and systems, and continue to promote the in-depth protection of consumer rights and interests.

Source: Financial Times