According to the SBV, credit institutions must strictly comply with previous legal documents on civil loans and credit card issuance, especially those on credit interest rates surcharges, calculation methods and transparency.

This means these institutions must make public their lending activities, such as standardised contracts listing, providing clients with information on lending rates, as well as establishing concrete interest rates determinants, including adjusted rates, overdue rates and other extra charges, before finalising a loan agreement.

Regarding consumer finance companies, the SBV is working on promulgating more in-depth regulations on uniform loan interest rates across the entire market to prevent fraudulent lending.

The SBV also ordered credit institutions to tighten credit control, by timely detecting malpractice and strictly handling violations of consumer lending regulations to protect customers’ interests.— VNS