OREANDA-NEWS. September 24, 2010. Moscow hosted an annual conference “Crediting in Russia”. Yulia Bondareva, the Head of the Department for Control of Financial Markets of the Federal Antimonopoly Service (FAS Russia), made a presentation on a topical issue – “Antimonopoly Aspects of Credit Activities in Russia”, reported the press-centre of FAS Russia.

Only in 2008 FAS Russia discovered 351 violations in credit advertising. In 2009 the figure decreased considerably – 96 violations.

To prevent such violations, FAS Russia drafted a law “On Introducing Amendments to the Federal law “On Advertising” in Terms of Advertising of Financial Services”. The draft Law changes requirements to advertisements of loan facilities. In particular, along with the interest rate advertisements should specify the full cost of loans. All terms and conditions in the text should be in the same size of print, advertisements should include the list of financial organizations, including micro-financing organizations.

According to Yulia Bondareva, typographic features of advertising brochures matter in delivering complete information to citizens about the real cost of a loan: the size and place of information in a loan agreement, types of print used for such information.

Procedures for providing information about the full costs of micro-loans by micro-financing organizations should be the same as for information about the fill costs of loans.

Thus, providing transparent and reliable information about consumer qualities and characteristics of financial services is possible through introducing minimum standards of financial services to the content and condition of providing such services by financial organizations. It is important to introduce legal framework for information disclosure standards for financial services, which would determine a unified form for providing the most essential information about financial products.

Excessive indebtedness of the borrowers – physical persons has been a pressing issue for a long time. “To keep the situation under control”, says Yulia Bondareva, “it is important to set maximum monthly loan payment in percentage of the borrower’s income and maximum borrower’s liability for breaching the deadlines for periodic loan payments; publish information regarding the size of “extortionate” interest; introduce liability for bank omissions. Banks also must undertake obligations to provide official written information to the borrowers about the size of a loan debt and a new schedule of loan payments on the day when the client comes to the office of a credit organization. According to Ms. Bondareva, banks should not impose additional services upon the borrowers when selling “package” (combines) financial products.