Over the past decade, financial consumer protection has become an increasingly mainstream priority. A strong consumer protection regime is key to ensuring that expanded access to financial services benefits consumers, enabling them to make well-informed decisions on how best to use financial services, building trust in the formal financial sector, and contributing to healthy and competitive financial markets. The global financial crisis of 2008 highlighted the importance of financial consumer protection for the long-term stability of the world financial system. The need for financial stability, financial integrity, financial inclusion, and financial consumer protection objectives to complement one another has become an increasingly common theme highlighted by global policy makers in recent years.

The World Bank’s Good Practices for Financial Consumer Protection (the Good Practices) was developed as a contribution to the emerging global set of tools on financial consumer protection. The 2017 edition of the Good Practices is specifically designed not as high-level principles, guidelines, or “best” practices. Rather, it is intended to serve as a practical, helpful collection of “good” practices in financial consumer protection, more detailed than principles or guidelines and drawing on successful practices seen around the world.