The current period of uncertainty has led to stagnant demand for mortgages and increased savings. Bankers are even seeing a saving trend reflected in long-term investment products.  Consumers do not show the same level of caution when faced with attempted bank fraud or fake investment offers circulating online. As a result, the digitalization process is being held back by financial and banking institutions themselves, which are forced to introduce additional control mechanisms to make transactions more secure.

These are just some of the topics debated on in the Alternative Dispute Resolution Centre (ABDRC) in the 7th episode of #PodcasturileCSALB, featuring Vladimir Kaliniv and Valentin Cocean, in a discussion moderated by Irina Chițu.

| ABDRC PODCAST | https://youtu.be/ra9jna7YtkM

This is the 4th year of ABDRC interviews with senior executives of the banking system and legal experts. This year, leading business journalists are invited to debate the hot banking topics in the Alternative Banking Dispute Resolution Centre (ABDRC). We review the news and their impact on the financial and banking market, as well as how consumers relate to their credit institutions, against a volatile and unpredictable socio-economic background.

“For the time being, consumer loans are the main products we grant. Demand has shrank for mortgages. For example, mortgages grew by less than one per cent in the first quarter, while consumer loans grew by more than 7%. The modest growth in mortgage lending comes as a result of the uncertainty we are going through. We are at a time when it is not clear what income we can rely on in the future. As mortgages are a long-term obligation, the decision to take out a home loan is put off by consumers. Somehow customers are currently waiting to see what’s next.

On the other hand, we are seeing a new trend and much more responsible behaviour from our customers. Instead of spending all the money they earn, they choose to contribute to savings products such as pensions or insurance. These products have regular, monthly instalments and people are transferring the discipline of loan repayment to the savings area. Customers are slowly starting to think about the financial products they can use in the future to maintain their current standard of living. Another reason for this is that Romanians’ standard of living has risen sharply in the last 15 years. With this, needs have evolved after the immediate ones have been met. Until now, the entire banking market has focused more on lending. Once we reached a stability threshold, we no longer needed to buy cars or household appliances every year. Having more money has made many people think about what their lives will look like later. Especially as this ‘later’, at present, continues to be fraught with uncertainty.”

“If you had to rank them, what are the most important issues that consumers are coming up with these days, both directly to the bank and to CSALB?“

 “We encounter more and more cases of cyber fraud. People who get duped, lose a lot of money, and then come to the bank to get it back. Unfortunately, recovering money that disappears from customers’ accounts is not easy. We also get a lot of enquiries from the police, who are trying to find out exactly what happened, but it’s very difficult to intervene. Cybercriminals use both technology and the desire of users to make money quickly and effortlessly. Criminals are exploiting the myth that people get rich from speculative investments on the internet. I am always surprised by the naivety of those who think that they put in 10 thousand lei and in two months earn 200 thousand lei. I can still remember the Ponzi schemes of the 90s, when people lost a lot of money. They need to understand that there are no real situations where you can make big money so quickly.

At bank level we have started to build customer protection systems. It’s a paradox that digitalization has made us faster, but it also makes us put on the brakes.  We’ve even introduced the possibility to call customers to make sure we’re not dealing with fraud on certain transactions that look suspicious. We have limited the authorisation of certain transactions to a single device, and in the banking app we have put safeguards that recognise remote control of a phone, for example.

People need to know that the bank will never ask for passwords or PINs. We will always invite the customer to come into one of our agencies for a face-to-face discussion, especially if there is an allegation of fraud. The bank may call if there’s a suspicious transaction on the account, but customer identification will always be made directly in the bank’s app.

The human relationship continues to be very important, especially for complex products such as insurance or investments. For simpler products, customers prefer digital interaction. More than 60% of our customers interact with the bank daily through the app.”

“If we were to do a ranking, what has been negotiated the most or what consumers are asking for in negotiating with the bank in CSALB, in a random order of importance, I think it would be various fee eliminations, CHF loans, bank fraud, and entering into negotiation after foreclosure proceedings have been opened.

On the subject of fees, I would like to point out that all sorts of ideas are being thrown around on the market, sometimes even by fellow lawyers, which the consumer may misunderstand. After being exposed to these messages, the consumer is tempted to criticise any term in the contract as unfair. For example, because many banks have given up management fees, there has been a misconception that they are prohibited by law.

In conciliations related to CHF loans, we always tend towards a reduction in the balance that compensates, in some way, for the rise in the franc. There is little to negotiate in fraud cases, because the solution comes exclusively from the bank, which chooses to help its customer. Because in most cases, it’s about mistakes consumers make, not the bank.

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  About ABDRC: ABDRC is an entity set up under a European Directive, and intermediates, free of charge and in not more than three months, negotiations between consumers and banks or NBFIs, for contracts/agreements in progress. Consumers from any county of the country may file applications with the Alternative Banking Dispute Resolution Centre (ABDRC) filling-in an online form directly on the website www.csalb.ro. Once the bank accepts to enter the conciliation/negotiation procedure, a conciliator is appointed. ABDRC works with 17 conciliators, of the best specialists in law and with relevant experience also in the financial and banking field. Everything is settled amicably, and the understanding between the parties has the power of court judgment. More information about the work of the Centre is available by phone at 021 9414 (charged a normal rate).