At the request of the French Ministry of the Economy and Finance, the Comité Consultatif du Secteur Financier has just published a report on mediation in the banking and insurance sectors. The report recommends strengthening the independence of banking mediators, which is sometimes deemed insufficient.
CCSF recommends strengthening the independence of mediators
Bruno Le Maire, Minister of the Economy and Finance, had asked the Comité Consultatif du Secteur Financier (CCSF) to evaluate the "banking and insurance mediation mechanisms, identifying any proposals for improvement that might be made", as stated in the CCSF press release. In the Minister's view, the current procedure raises "difficulties that weigh on its effectiveness".
The CCSF report was submitted to Bruno Le Maire on July 1. The working group was made up of the Autorité de contrôle prudentiel et de résolution (ACPR), the Commission d'évaluation et de contrôle de la médiation à la consommation (CECMC), the Direction générale du Trésor, banking and insurance mediators, and members of the CCSF.
The CCSF has made a number of recommendations, including guaranteeing greater independence for bank ombudsmen, who can currently be appointed by the banks themselves.
The CCSF recommends that the mediator appointed by the bank should not have been an employee of the bank in the previous years. While professional representatives have called for a period of 2 years, consumer associations have asked for a period of 5 years.
The CCSF also recommends the introduction of a charter of ethics "binding on all mediators, incorporating common principles and made public". The task of drawing up this charter will fall to the Cercle des médiateurs bancaires.
No questioning of the system for appointing banking mediators
While the CCSF recommends greater independence for banking mediators, no agreement could be reached between the various members of the working group on the question of the system for appointing mediators.
According to the Commission d'évaluation et de contrôle de la médiation à la consommation (CECM), the current fragmentation of mediation is caused by the appointment system, which allows each bank to designate its own mediator. The CECM believes that requests would be better and more homogeneously handled if a single group of mediators could share the files of several banks, as is already the case in the insurance sector.
However, according to the French Banking Federation, the effectiveness and "added value" of such an approach have not been proven. The FBF also insists that the mediation service is free of charge, precisely because the mediator is paid by the bank employing him/her.
UFC-Que Choisir, a consumer association, reacted to the CCSF report by denouncing the lack of independence of bank mediators. UFC-Que Choisir points out that in 84% of cases, so-called company mediation, i.e. private mediation, results in the inadmissibility of requests.