The Fair Trade Commission reviewed the terms and conditions of banks and mutual savings banks and uncovered 60 clauses it judged to infringe on customer rights. The Fair Trade Commission asked the Financial Services Commission (FSC), which oversees banks and mutual savings banks, to correct the problematic clauses.
On the 29th, the Fair Trade Commission said it reviewed 1,735 sets of terms and conditions of banks and mutual savings banks and deemed 60 clauses across 17 types to be unfair trade terms. The Fair Trade Commission conducts annual reviews of financial transaction terms and conditions established or revised by financial institutions, and this review was part of that process.
According to the Fair Trade Commission's review, some banks allowed themselves to change, suspend, or restrict services at their discretion. The Fair Trade Commission viewed these as clauses that could cause unforeseeable harm to customers. In particular, Bank A created a condition of use stating, "In other cases deemed necessary, the bank may suspend this service for all currency or specific currency."
Another bank omitted individual notification procedures regardless of whether the matter had a significant impact on customers' rights and obligations. The Fair Trade Commission detected terms that could cause harm to customers because, when changing the details of preferential services for deposits, the relevant information was posted only at bank branches and on the website, preventing customers from learning of the changes in a timely manner.
Clauses that allowed banks to unilaterally determine the content of performance also posed problems. Bank B's foreign exchange transaction agreement stated, "The bank … (omitted) … may terminate individual foreign exchange contracts with an offsetting transaction at the counterparty's request, and in such cases, the applicable exchange rate shall be reasonably determined by the bank." The Fair Trade Commission said, "Performance is the core content of a contract," adding, "One party should not arbitrarily determine or change it."
In addition, clauses that exempted banks from liability even when there was a possibility of bank fault, such as system failures, and clauses that restricted the termination of deposits through electronic financial services outside branches were also problematic.
The Fair Trade Commission said, "Through the correction request, many unfair terms will be fixed, which can prevent harm that financial transaction customers, including consumers and small and midsize businesses using banks and mutual savings banks, might suffer."
Meanwhile, the Fair Trade Commission plans to request corrections within the year for unfair terms found in the sectors of specialized credit finance, financial investment, and online investment-linked finance.