Access Investments-European Union- ROMANIA

The period of economic boom has exacerbated the asymmetry between customers and banks, and this aspect has created the need to create an entity that would provide consumers with the option for the alternative resolution of disputes with banks, namely the Center for Alternative Resolution of Lawsuits in the Banking System (CSALB), says Bogdan Olteanu, the deputy governor of the National Bank of Romania (BNR).  The official of the Central Bank said: "The financial sector has made this financial effort that I praise, to find the necessary mechanisms for this structure, to remove the need for consumers to bear any costs"  The creation of the SAL has produced a series of controversies, as many people feel that it is a complicated process.  Bogdan Olteanu said, quoted by Agerpres: "For one of the parties, for the banks, what is so complicated is that there currently is a system that treats them asymmetrically compared to the treatment that consumers get! Yes, that's how things work nowadays, at least in Europe. There is an asymmetry in treatment that balances out the relationship between consumers and banks and it is natural for it to be that way, because there is an asymmetry in accessing information, there is an asymmetry in the processing of that information between consumers and banks, and then the institutional system rebalances the relationship which makes it possible, for instance, for a decision rendered here to be mandatory, while consumers are allowed to challenge it further if they do not agree with it".  In the opinion of the NBR deputy governor, lawyers are against the system because they are losing money the moment consumers decide not to go to court to resolve the lawsuit with the bank and they go to the Center instead: "It is a success and I want to celebrate it. We are among the countries that have succeeded in building such a Center. I hope that next year we are going to find that we have also made it functional. (...) Good luck to banks in scrubbing their reputation of the dirt that has accumulated during the boom period. We are, I hope, on the right path to reestablish this relationship of trust, where citizens go to confidently deposit the money earned through their work with the bank, and other citizens go in with confidence to borrow that money, to use it and then pay it back, so that the depositor can get it back at any time".