Financial service consumers and insurers link up on awareness

Russia's Agency for Deposit Insurance and the Union of Financial Services Consumers will share information as part of a cooperation agreement, in a bid to promote financial service awareness and better protection for Russian financial service users.

The Agency for Deposit Insurance (ADI) and the Union of Financial Services Consumers (Finpotrebsoyuz) decided to join their efforts to make Russia's financial services market more transparent and reliable for people, saying the issue of people's financial literacy, the standards to operate in Russia's banking market and protection of people's legislative rights will be the focus. Igor Kostikov, head of the board at Finpotrebsoyuz, said that there is little legislation currently protecting rights of financial service consumers."This is one of our major goals – to point to the very existence of the problem and the need to work with that."Alexandre Turbanov, CEO at ADI, told RT Business that the cooperation of the two organizations will work across three major fields."We seek to make Russians more financially literate, to teach them to make considered decisions, and to calculate their risks and operate in the financial market efficiently. Also, from now on we'll be able to exchange available information, with ADI, for example, having good banking statistics and analytical materials, and Finpotrebsoyuz – the information from consumers themselves. And, finally, we'll hold meetings to work out a joint strategy and policy of further work."According to Kostikov, the combination of different authority rights of the two bodies will be the key advantage of their cooperation."I expect, that the combination of different assets of legislative instruments will provide for efficient joint work. For instance, ADI can spot the existence of a financial pyramid in the market, but isn't authorized to complain against that, while we do have."Business RT: Anastasia Kostomarova