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Johannesburg - The Financial Services Board (FSB) is crafting a plan to bring about a "culture change" in the way banks dealt with their customers, a senior official said on Tuesday.
"There should be a principle in place around fair treatment of customers," FSB deputy executive officer of insurance Jonathan Dixon told reporters.
"There needs to be more intensive and intrusive supervision by the regulator."
He said the FSB's treating customers fairly framework would provide a basis to strengthen client protection.
"It aims to bring about a culture change in the way financial service providers deal with their customers."
However, he said, there would always be institutions spending money on trying to find loopholes in the system.
"There is no silver bullet... it is a long, uphill battle until we get to the space where we can confidently say the standard of consumer protection is where we want it to be."
The first step to improvement would be looking at how the FSB could move from a reactive approach to a much more proactive one.
"The other key element is visible enforcement... in other words, firms who continue to refuse to treat their customers fairly, they need to feel a very strong disincentive for continuing to do that. That's a combination of increasing the probability of that behaviour being detected... but also a very strong sanction."
"There should be a principle in place around fair treatment of customers," FSB deputy executive officer of insurance Jonathan Dixon told reporters.
"There needs to be more intensive and intrusive supervision by the regulator."
He said the FSB's treating customers fairly framework would provide a basis to strengthen client protection.
"It aims to bring about a culture change in the way financial service providers deal with their customers."
However, he said, there would always be institutions spending money on trying to find loopholes in the system.
"There is no silver bullet... it is a long, uphill battle until we get to the space where we can confidently say the standard of consumer protection is where we want it to be."
The first step to improvement would be looking at how the FSB could move from a reactive approach to a much more proactive one.
"The other key element is visible enforcement... in other words, firms who continue to refuse to treat their customers fairly, they need to feel a very strong disincentive for continuing to do that. That's a combination of increasing the probability of that behaviour being detected... but also a very strong sanction."
