Financial Inclusion: Reforms in the Fields of Consumer Protection and Financial Literacy

The collapse of the subprime mortgage market in the USA was due not least to the lack of effective disclosure of information and misleading advertising on the web sites of providers, as well as insufficient understanding of financial products on the part of consumers. An improvement in this institutional environment should therefore serve to prevent this kind of negative development in the future. This article offers an overview of which industrialised countries have implemented reforms in the fields of consumer protection and financial literacy.