08 february 2024, 14:47

FOS Public Council meeting takes place

The meeting of the Financial Ombudsman Service (FOS) Public Council was held on the 8th of February. It was the first time that the Public Council meeting had been conducted in the open mode with the presence of mass media people.

The first item on the agenda considered the principles of complex settlement of debts of the borrower-individual to financial institutions with the involvement of the Financial Ombudsman.

Opening the meeting, Chief Financial Ombudsman Yury Voronin stressed that Russian President Vladimir Putin had instructed the Government to work together with the Bank of Russia and establish a single mandatory procedure for out-of-court dispute resolution between professional lenders and citizens in connection with credit and loan debts.

“This assignment is very important, of great social significance, and affects the interests of a very large number of common people, for whom loans are an integral part of their well-being, maintaining their standards of living, and therefore we are going to work towards this end. In this regard, the standpoint and the support of the Public Council are of high importance to us,” Yury Voronin noted.

As Vladislav Grib, Chairman of the FOS Public Council, stressed, “the issue, which we are now considering, concerns tens of millions of citizens and is of great social relevance, which can hardly be overestimated.”

Speaking at the meeting, Financial Ombudsman Viktor Klimov noted that currently the total amount of citizens’ loans had exceeded 30 trillion rubles. “It’s not bad for the economy, but it obviously involves certain risks and causes some concerns,” he stressed.

The participants of the meeting pointed out that the Financial Ombudsman Service was expected to become in the foreseeable future a ground for resolving issues related to the settlement of citizens’ debts through the financial reconciliation procedure, while a financial ombudsman involved in the relevant processes would serve as an impartial third party, ensuring the balance of interests of all participants to the legal relations.

In the course of the meeting the participants also discussed the current model of the FOS Council membership formation.

The proposal was approved to include a representative of relevant public associations into the FOS Council, implying a member of the FOS Public Council. It was noted at the meeting that the Service primarily operates for the sake of citizens, the ultimate goal of all activities being the protection of their rights.

The meeting participants also discussed the search for the optimal method of out-of-court dispute resolution between consumers and service providers in the sphere of turnover of digital financial assets and digital currencies in the financial market, as well as approaches to improving financial literacy of participants in the market of digital financial assets and digital currencies.

The Public Council members emphasized the importance of this challenge and approved the idea to actively involve Members of the Russian State Duma, experts from the research community, as well as academic institutions.

The meeting also discussed the preparation of the first All-Russian Student Forum on Financial Literacy in the Sphere of Digital Currencies and Digital Financial Assets. Members of the Public Council backed holding the forum in April 2024 at the Russian Academy of Education, which will gather students and professors from leading Russian universities, including the Higher School of Economics, Lomonosov Moscow State University, Moscow State Institute of International Relations (MGIMO), Griboyedov Moscow University and other academic institutions.

Discussing the issue of the Public Council’s tasks for the current year, the participants decided to include into the work plan the programme of approbation of reception of appeals to the Financial Ombudsman through the MFCs and proposals for further actions.

The participants also agreed to include into the Public Council’s work plan the discussion of the issue on the need to determine the procedural specifics of court examination of disputes on disagreement with the Financial Ombudsman’s decision, as well as the Financial Ombudsman’s procedural status.

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