Banking, financial services and consumer protection: Introduction

Abstract

In December 1996, the Canadian Government set up a Task Force on the Future of the Canadian Financial Services Sector. One of the terms of reference of the Task Force was to make recommendations to enhance the contribution that financial services could make ‘...to the best interests of Canadian consumers’. To inform its approach to this aspect of its work, the Task Force commissioned research papers on consumers in the financial services sector, drawing not only on Canadian experience, but also on past and present developments in other parts of the world, including Australia, the United States and the European Union. The results of the international research were initially published by the Canadian Government Department of Finance in September 1998 as an appendix to Change, Challenge and Opportunity, the Report of the Task Force (Crown Copyright in this material is noted).1 It was felt that the papers on the situation in the European Union and some of its member states were of interest to a much wider audience, and the Department of Finance gave permission for publication as this special issue of the Journal of Consumer Studies and Home Economics, which invited me to be Guest Editor. I am especially grateful to the authors of three of the national country studies – Joop Koopman (The Netherlands), Rainer Metz (Germany) and Susanne Storm (Denmark and Sweden) – as well as to John Chant and Robert R. Kerton in Canada, whose imaginative approach to the work of the Task Force led to this study being carried out.