It is expedient to create the institution of financial ombudsperson in Ukraine, Deputy Head of Kyiv Economic Court Viktoria Dzharty has said.
“The task of the ombudsperson is to work out options to settle a dispute, inform the parties of each other’s positions, help the borrower correctly formulate his claim against the bank, and in short, act as a mediator between the parties… The parties will have an additional platform to defend their interests and seek a compromise to taking the case to court,” she wrote in her blog on the Ekonomichna Pravda online newspaper.
Dzharty said that the number of disputes involving banks would continue to grow every year and added that when the number of such cases is measures in thousands, then it is a problem of the state.
“When problems affect society, each party tries to keep the same level of income falling due to the crisis, at the expense of the other party. It often makes the situation absurd. This is clearly reflected in relations between Ukrainian banks and borrowers,” Dzharty said.
She said that some unscrupulous banks had tried to play all kinds of tricks on their customers, from illegal commissions, the failure to inform them of a change of essential terms of a contract, payment delays, and the issuing of “fake” loans.
According to the statement, irresponsible borrowers, in turn, use all procedural rights so as to delay the trial for many years, including through the removal of judges, and having credit and collateral agreements declared invalid.
