Thirty-eight participants from 27 AFI member institutions are in Kuala Lumpur this week for the Member Training on Consumer Empowerment and Market Conduct. This event is a collaboration between Bank Negara Malaysia (BNM) and AFI.

The opening remarks were delivered by Ms. Kristina Rai, Director of Human Capital Development Centre (HCDC), BNM and Mr. Norbert Mumba, Deputy Executive Director, AFI. Ms. Rai highlighted that consumer empowerment has always been of importance to regulators. It is important that regulators are updated about consumer needs and demands and if that is done, sometime all that might be needed is just tweaking of existing policies to better meet the needs of the consumers.

Mr. Mumba in his speech shared AFI’s work on Consumer Empowerment and Market Conduct (CEMC). AFI’s CEMC Working Group was set up in 2011 and has been the driving force behind AFI’s work on Consumer Empowerment and Market Conduct. The Working Group has been working on specific topics and delivering thematic knowledge which will be shared during the training. “Indeed market conduct regulation aims to prevent (and manage where prevention fails), the dangers that arise from a financial institution conducting its business in ways that are unfair to customers or undermines the integrity of financial markets and confidence in the financial system” he added.

Financial education is an important pillar of CEMC and diverse initiatives have been taken by AFI members on this. The focus now is on assessing the impact – immediate outcomes of the initiatives and more importantly, the long-term impact on financial capabilities and the financial behaviour of consumers. AFI strives to meet the learning needs of the members and thus includes emerging topics in the training content. A full day is being dedicated to use of behavioural economics in policy making. Behavioural Insights Team will train on the key concepts, Busara will showcase its work on the same and Financial Conduct Authority, United Kingdom will share how they have used behavioural insights in drafting policies in UK.

Peer learning has been the cornerstone of AFI’s capacity building events. The training is thus designed to incorporate technical inputs from external technical experts and AFI and BNM staff and most importantly sharing of country experiences by the participants themselves.