Misseling as a modern tool of unfair sales of banking products and services in commercial banks

Introduction. Misseling has become a problem for commercial bank customers today. Misseling can be found both in large credit institutions and small banks. Formally, this is not a violation of the law, but, in fact, misleading of the client. In fact, there is a bank fraud when selling a banking product or service. Despite the fact that this phenomenon can be found in almost any bank to varying degrees of participation, from a scientific point of view it has not yet been sufficiently studied, although recently the Bank of Russia has made an attempt to regulate this process legislatively. Theoretical analysis. The article analyzes the concept of “misseling” and its place in the technique of unfair sales of banking products and services in commercial banks. Modern types of misseling are distinguished: unfair information, related sales, opaque pricing, sale of unsuitable products, product substitution. Empirical analysis. It was revealed that the number of misseling cases in the banking sector in the analyzed period increased, one of the reasons was a significant reduction in the key rate after its high value, low level of the population’s financial literacy. Against the background of a significant decrease in complaints related to investment life insurance, there was an increase in complaints related to cumulative life insurance, as well as the number of all other complaints on various topics. Results. The directions of improvement on encountering misselling by the Bank of Russia, commercial banks and clients are formulated and described. One of these areas was the introduction of new rules for the sale of financial products by the Bank of Russia. If the Central Bank of the Russian Federation detects a violation on the part of a commercial bank, it has the right to issue an order to the financial institution to suspend the sale of the product until the problems are eliminated. In some cases, the Bank of Russia may oblige the bank to buy back from customers all products sold in violation and make a full refund.

misseling, unfair behavior, unacceptable practice, low-quality sales, commercial bank, banking products sales technique, banking sector