Economic and Commercial Law Researches

Study of the US Consumer Financial Protection Bureau's triple prohibitions; With a comparative look at Iran's legal system

Document Type : Original Article

Authors

سید امین پیشنماز 1
Mustafa Elsan 2

1 Ph.D student of private law, Department of Private Law, Faculty of Law, Shahid Beheshti University, Tehran.

2 Associate Professor, Department of Private Law, Faculty of Law, Shahid Beheshti University, Tehran

https://doi.org/10.48308/eclr.2024.237307.1097
Abstract
The superior position of suppliers of financial and credit products and services for various reasons such as information asymmetry, unequal transactional power, specialization and complexity of the contract provisions and the consumer's lack of full understanding of its details causes abuse and exploitation of the stronger party. Historically, Congress prohibited unfair and deceptive acts and practices in trade through the Federal Trade Commission in 1914 and 1938. In 1980 and 1983, two policy statements were issued by the commission in order to clarify and achieve a relatively uniform procedure in interpreting the prohibitions of unfair and deceptive acts and practices. The ineffectiveness of consumer protection institutions and mechanisms in this area, along with the reduction of the involvement and supervision of the responsible institutions, led to the extravagance of banks and institutions providing mortgage loans, which caused the financial crisis in 2007 and 2008. In 2010, the financial consumer protection bureau was established as an independent institution with the ability to regulate, monitor, prosecute and enforce. In this article, which is compiled in a descriptive-analytical way, firstly, the mentioned triple prohibitions are studied according to the policy statements issued in this regard, then the existing mechanisms in Iran's legal system are compared with similar functions. The lack of comprehensive, integrated and up-to-date consumer protection tools in the domestic system and the need to cite and adhere to general rules can be inferred from the study of the domestic system.

Keywords

Unfair
Deceptive
Abuse
Consumer Financial Protection Bureau
Consumer Protection Act

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