FSC backtracks on cash-card ad rules

The Financial Supervisory Commission yesterday made an about-face, again, over a ban on cash-card advertisements that it announced earlier this month.

The commission announced earlier this month it would ban lenders from airing television, movie and radio advertisements for cash-advance cards from May 1, after deciding to use stricter regulations to govern the popular consumer banking product.

"The commission will evaluate the necessity of the bans in one week ? as many lenders said they can be self-disciplined in this aspect," the commission's vice chairman Lu Daung-yen (呂東英) said at a press conference yesterday.

Lu's remarks came after another vice chairperson of the commission, Susan Chang (張秀蓮), stated that the regulator may halt the implementation of the restrictions -- if certain requirements are met -- after meeting with the banking sector and consumers' rights associations on Wednesday. Chang made the comments during a question-and-answer session at the legislature's Finance Committee earlier yesterday.

The requirements include full disclosure of the highest interest rates and application fees charged by issuers, as well as the warnings about borrowing to maintain credit. These could take the form of either spoken word segments that last five seconds, or subtitles that make up one-tenth of the frames of advertisements, Chang said.