投资者到金融消费者的角色嬗变

Transition From Investor to Financial Consumer

金融产品的日益抽象化、复杂化和金融交易模式的日益综合化、专业化,导致金融市场投资者群体的身份转化与角色嬗变。非专业投资者或者大众投资者逐渐与消费者融合,成为一类新的市场主体即金融消费者。金融消费者是为满足非营业性的个体金融需要而购买或使用金融商品或者享受金融服务的自然人。对于金融消费者存在其中的法律关系,需要建构体现特殊宗旨或调整方法的法律规范。我国可以在保留现有证券、银行、保险、信托分业监管和分业立法的格局下,建构以保护金融消费者权益为核心的金融服务法或金融消费者权益保护法。

Nowadays, financial products have become growingly abstract and complicated, and the financial trading models have been more and more integrated while professional. As a result,investors are experiencing a transformation of their roles in the financial markets. Non--professional investors or the public investors are integrated with consumers in essence gradually and become a self--contained class of market subjects, that is, the financial consumers. Financial consumers mean individuals who obtain financial products or services from financial institutions primarily for personal, family, or household purposes. As far as the legal relationship where financial consumers exist, legal norms embodying special aim or adjusting method should be constructed. With such a market change and the conflicting interests among the market participants, many developed market economy countries make the protection of financial consumers the central part of their financial system reform. Although the concept of financial consumer has not been introduced in or adopted by Chinese law, there are already some legal institutions concerning the protection of the rights and interests of financial consumers. Such legal norms and institutions can be separated from the respective financial law departments, under the existing separate regulatory and legislative regime of security, bank, insurance and trust, and reconstruct a financial service law or a financial consumer law centered on the protection of the rights and interests of financial consumers together with some new constructed legal norms. Our future financial service law should focus on the standards of financial products and services, do it best to define the benefit allocation mode of financial products in advance and control the implied market risk, and integrate the existing market regulatory regime effectively.