美国金融消费者保护机制的改革及经验

Financial Consumer Protection Mechanism in the United States:Reform and Experience

次贷危机后美国不仅建立了专门的联邦金融消费者保护机构,而且通过完善信息披露、严格抵押贷款条件等具体制度加强对金融消费者的保护。美国的经验表明,消费者保护职能与审慎监管职能由同一个机构行使时,应确保消费者保护部门的独立性,以协调审慎监管目标与消费者保护目标之间的潜在冲突;以分业监管为基础设立的消费者保护部门之间应建立有效的协调机制以确保一致监管、避免重复监管和监管漏洞。监管方法的选择方面,规则监管的基础上适当采纳原则监管,可以有效应对金融创新对消费者保护和金融稳定的负面影响。鉴于信息披露在金融消费者保护方面的重要性,应通过合理设计信息披露的内容、简化信息披露的方式、加强金融教育等手段提高信息披露的有效性。

The United States strengthened financial consumer protection after the subprime crisis by setting up an independent federal agency that carries primary responsibility for regulating consumer protection,improving information disclosure to consumers,and establishing minimum underwriting standards for mortgages.Experiences of the U.S.show that when financial consumer protection regulator resides in the same agency as the prudential supervisor,measures should be taken to ensure the independence of consumer protection department in order to coordinate potential conflicts between prudential regulation and consumer protection.Moreover,effective coordination mechanism should be established between different consumer protection departments based on separate operation in different parts of financial sector so as to ensure consistent regulation and avoidance of regulatory duplication and regulatory gap.As far as the regulatory methods are concerned,in addition to rule-based regulation,principle-based regulation should also be adopted so as to cope with side effects of financial innovation on consumer protection and financial stability.Due to the important role of information disclosure in financial consumer protection,information disclosure should be made more effective by reasonably designing the content of information disclosure,simplifying the form of information disclosure and raising consumers' financial literacy by enhancing financial education.