The antitrust watchdog said it supports the refinancing of loans with a different bank than the one grating the loan, because it brings benefits to customers and stimulates the competition between banks.
The antitrust regulator proposes to hold talks between all actors involved (banks, associations of banks, the Finance Ministry, guarantee funds and the National Bank of Romania) so that natural persons, with no overdue payments, can refinance their loans with different banks.
The competition on the payment services market will become fiercer along with transposing the Directive regarding Payment Services (Revised Payment Service Directive), which opens the market towards new actors (for instance, fintechs). However, the Director has not yet been transposed into the national legislation, although the implementation deadline was set for January 2018.
In this context, the Competition Council recommends adopting a joint software application- API (Application Programming Interface) – for the Romanian banking system in order to ease the fast and easy implementation of the Directive.
The National Consumer Protection Authority (ANPC) is obliged, according to legal provisions, to put at consumers’ disposal a free access website used to compare the fees imposed by payment services providers. This website has not been operational so far.