Enforcing consumer protection law in Malaysian consumer credit arena: evaluating the enforcement powers of different regulators

• Main Authors: Hassan, Rusni, Kassim, Salina, Abu Bakar, Elistina, Ilias, Ibtisam @ Ilyana
• Format: Conference or Workshop Item
• Language: English; English
• Published: 2018
• Subjects: H Social Sciences (General); HG Finance; HG3368 Islamic Banking and Finance; K Law (General); KPG Malaysia
• Online Access: http://irep.iium.edu.my/64694/1/Enforcing%20Consumer%20Protection%20Law.pdf; http://irep.iium.edu.my/64694/2/Enforcing%20Consumer%20Protection%20-%20paper.pdf; http://irep.iium.edu.my/64694/; http://gcbss.org/cimssr2018/
• Institution: Universiti Islam Antarabangsa Malaysia

This paper attempts to analyse the enforcement aspect of consumer protection law by different regulators in consumer credit arena in Malaysia. The scope is restricted to agencies regulating four major consumer credit institutions namely banking, hire-purchase, moneylending and pawnbroking. Specifically, the enforcement agencies are the Central Bank of Malaysia, the Ministry of Domestic Trade and Consumer Affairs and the Ministry of Housing and Local Government. By confining the scope of enforcement action executed by these public agencies, private and collective enforcement is thereby excluded. Consequent to this piecemeal approach, enforcement activities are pursued with different zest not only due to different statutory powers but other factors including human and financial resources constraints and priorities of each regulator. The research finds that entrusting different regulators with different statutory powers and human resources causes different level of protection accorded to various groups of financial consumers which may be inferior or superior than the other. Therefore, to enable uniformity, establishing a single regulator is viewed as a viable approach. This mechanism has been adopted by several countries renowned with strong consumer protection regime such as Australia, the United Kingdom and South Africa.