Awareness Shelf

Making a right choice in the purchase of a financial product/service is not an easy task. Consumers face difficulties due to the complex features of products and services offered, as well as the technical jargon used in the literature of banking contracts and sales illustrations. To this end, educating consumers becomes crucial to enable them to make well informed decisions in order to find the products that best suit their needs. Certain trends can be observed on consumer issues in the industry from data on complaints received from the public against banks/MFBs. The number of complaints received with regard to the conduct of banks have increased. The issues reflect the lack of professionalism on the part of some banks/MFBs in servicing their customers as well as failure of consumers to exercise their rights under the contracts that made them vulnerable to the misconduct. This shows that the consumer does not know their obligations under the terms and conditions of product, misunderstand the wording of Terms and conditions of contracts due to its technicality and over expectation of consumer on what they are entitled to claim. This reflects that consumers still lack the basic understanding on financial matters and this may result in them falling prey to unethical activities committed by industry as well as non-industry players. This calls for the need to pay greater attention for strategies to help educate consumers to safeguard their own interests.

This awareness shelf comprises of most useful information whereby the consumers are obliged to review their rights and responsibilities as a banking consumer, aware themselves on disclosures/information made mandatory to be provided by Banks/MFBs on various products like Key Fact statements on Consumer Products and Banking accounts, Information about currency notes, information on identity theft etc. The useful links on consumer awareness/education can be accessed at the following link:-
https://www.sbp.org.pk/cpd/cpd-shelf.asp