The Deco Association has been following banking customers surprised by the sale of its housing credit to an outdoor company and, in recent years, has found “run over” consumer rights, especially since 2017.
Speaking to Lusa about the monitoring of housing assignment processes, the Portuguese Association’s Jurist for Consumer Protection – Deco Natália Nunes states that many of the families who saw their credits are sold by banks to foreign companies seek the association “without realizing” exactly what happened with their loan.
“Often, [as famílias] They come to knock on the door of Deco saying that the credit is no longer with the bank, [que] Now it’s another entity, but they have no idea what entity is. No idea they can negotiate, if they cannot negotiate, what will happen from [desse momento]”Says Deco’s financial protection office coordinator, noting that this“ insecurity has marked these last years ”.
“More concretely from 2017 to this part, we have been contacted by consumers who are assigned to their credits. Of course a lot of personal credit, but also a lot of housing credit. And it has been a process – which I would say – ‘painful’ to consumers, even due to the absence of legislation, which presupposes the absence of protection for consumers, which leaves them in a very fragile situation,” he describes.
Families go to the association’s legal services for ‘vacancies’, at times when banks sell large rally credit portfolios.
Customers are already in a vulnerable situation, in breach, when they are the subject of a credit assignment and “this vulnerability is still aggravated when we are talking about housing” and the interlocutor becomes a non -financial company, not supervised by Banco de Portugal, says.
From then on, customers are no longer covered by the legal rules governing housing credit contracts and, therefore, can fail to exercise the so -called right to take back the contract, that is, to pay off debt over and over again to pay the loan to benefits.
“Over the years, [uma] Number of families eventually passed through these processes clearly with run over their rights ”and some lost“ their family home, ”says Natália Nunes.
“We always feel great run over to what is personal life, the financial life of families. It is true that there was some improvement when Banco de Portugal itself, through a warning, has defined some limits on contacts that may be by credit institutions or third parties hired by recovery, but the truth is that we continue to hear testimonies of some aggressiveness by these companies every day.”
The jurist understands that there needs to be regulation about the recovery companies or collection of credit, to protect consumers from abuse.
The expectation that this year, the new legal regime for assignment and management of bank credits, which transposes a 2021 European directive that should have already been transposed by the end of 2023, brings greater supervision over this sector and greater protection of bank clients.
The new legislation provides for “recognition of acquired rights” to consumers, according to the “principle of neutrality”, meaning that, in a credit assignment, customers will continue to have “exactly” the rights they had when the loan was in the bank, says Natália Nunes.
One of the rights already consecrated was that of the resumption of credit. “Now, if it was a right he already had, he will automatically have to continue to have,” the jurist understands, stressing that it is necessary “a more detailed analysis” of the legislation, already promulgated by the President of the Republic on August 13.
Pedro Crisóstomo, from Lusa Agency
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