ANPC wants to hire 200 finance-bank specialists; The BNR wants to take over the protection of the banking consumer; there is no money in the budget

In the context in which the state budget is facing a deficit of over 56 billion lei, and budget expenses are 14% higher than last year, for which the Ciucă Cabinet approved GEO 90/2023, for the reduction of budget expenses for the year 2023 , the National Authority for Consumer Protection is considering hiring, even during the next year, 200 specialists in the financial-banking field. The information regarding the steps regarding the employment of the 200 people appeared after Mugur Isărescu, the governor of the National Bank of Romania, declared that the central bank is prepared to take over the protection of consumers of financial products and services from ANPC, if the Parliament adopts a draft act normative in the legislative circuit. Governor Isărescu argued that banking supervision and consumer protection come into conflict, but he emphasized that, if the legislator decides, the National Bank will also take over the task of protecting banking consumers, but only within a totally separate direction from that of supervision, which to be called differently and to operate in a different building than the central bank.

According to some political sources, the Government would prepare a normative act through which a super-structure would be created within ANPC, made up of 200 people who will deal with the regulation and control of the activity of credit operators/administrators. The respective sources recall that the decisions taken recently by ANPC in the banking financial field were controversial, because the Authority's employees do not have the necessary expertise to carry out the activity of protecting consumers of financial-banking services. For example, according to a recent study conducted by PwC in 15 states, the method proposed by ANPC for loan repayment does not exist in any of the states analyzed. Moreover, the fines applied by ANPC in May of this year to a number of 19 banks were challenged in the courts and so far the suspension of the application of the orders issued by the Authority has been obtained in most of the cases where the banks contested the fines.

Regarding the future employees, Horia Constantinescu, the president of ANPC, told us: "The normative act related to this issue was promulgated last year and there are still many months until it is implemented. We have not yet taken over these posts. As long as I haven't picked them up yet, it means I don't have to think about paying for them tomorrow. Only after we take them over will we see, and until then I will think about where the people will be from. They will be hired following the establishment of a bibliography, to take an exam. You have to take into account that today we are somewhere around 400 commissioners at the national level investigating several tens of thousands of petitions, carrying out several dozen national issues and several dozen regional issues plus the commands and operative actions that you know. With a number of several million economic operators that we check, we are happy to receive new assignments, but we showed the Parliament that for the assignments we receive, we will also have to receive positions, because it is not possible to cope with 400 people at the level that every consumer would like. And as we are talking here about a situation that requires study at the office and the analysis of all situations, of course all those who will be employed will not be limited only to such situations, but will also be able to support in parallel the activity in relation to the situations in the field financial-banking. As long as you have a specific qualification for such an activity, certainly - as today our colleagues are researching from shops to banks, passing through airlines, railway transport and any provision of services or products that are made available to consumers - and possibly new colleagues will have to check more financial statements".

The President of ANPC specified that, after the approval of the government decision to reorganize the Authority, "the one by virtue of the ordinance with the recalibration of management positions", the public institution will initiate another government decision to determine exactly how to distribute the future employees.

Horia Constantinescu said: "We are not going to take 200 positions within the central structure; we will have to see how we distribute them nationally. If you ask me, today we don't have any building to put them all in, but we have enough buildings to distribute a number of such positions as needed. It's not an imminent story, it doesn't mean it's happening tomorrow. As we manage to tick off stages and consult with the other ministries, we will establish a common denominator of the implementation of this new requirement. The newly hired personnel will be strictly specialized in the financial-banking field, but will not be limited to the attributes established in the respective normative act. In this area, we carry out control activities aimed at the activity of banks and non-banking financial institutions. That is, in the same area, with the same specific activity, the new employees will support the entire activity of the Authority in relation to any of the requirements of the financial checks. Practically, the 200 new employees will relieve the other 400 of the verifications in the financial-banking field and, in this way, we can devote much more time to situations regarding the financial situation of consumers that are becoming more and more alarming recently" .

Regarding the protection of consumers of financial-banking services, we mention that the BURSA newspaper showed in its pages that, according to the data of the Center for Alternative Dispute Resolution in the Banking Domain (CSALB), the number of lawsuits between consumers and banks is at the lowest level in 2015 onwards. Thus, if in the period 2015 - 2016 there were approximately 40,000 lawsuits between consumers and banks, and last year the number of disputes was 13,000, in 2023 the records of the banking system show that the number of lawsuits decreased to 12,000. CSALB also shows that in the first nine months of the current year, 575 clients negotiated with banks for better conditions for existing contracts, and 475 of them reached an agreement with the bank and found a solution to the reported problems, 20% more many than in the same period last year.