OFT look into credit card competition
The government’s OFT (Office of Fair Trading) will be looking into equality and competition within the UK’s over saturated Credit Card industry.
As spending on plastic skyrockets, major credit card companies will come under the watchful eye of the OFT, which will assess the fairness of business operations in the highly competitive, but unsecured consumer credit market.
The OFT recently made public its plans to deal with the knock on effect of the credit crunch, and how this has affected the financial services sector. One of it main priorities within the UK is to increase the overall responsibilities of lenders within credit card companies, to the obvious benefit of the consumer.
“With our focus on credit, we are addressing the area in which there is a real risk of short-term consumer harm while also ensuring that the sector that emerges from the current crisis is competitive and behaves fairly and responsibly towards consumers,” said OFT chief executive John Fingleton.
The G20 meetings, which were wrapped up last week, led to promises over improving the global financial services industry and to ensure tighter regulation on financial markets. The OFT however, have a big task in hand, ensuring that government changes to the finance sector don’t weaken the already problematic credit sector.
