COT's Top Four Commercial Issues - January 2018

Happy 2018 to you all.

Our first update of the year sees certain regulators taking an active role in managing markets and trading practices, with a useful reminder of a rather large change in law fast approaching.

Grab yourself a hot beverage and enjoy.

FCA encouraging a switch

The Financial Conduct Authority ("FCA") has published new rules to require providers of personal and business current accounts to make information about their services available to customers. The new rules seek to promote competition by enabling customers to make meaningful comparisons between service providers and to choose a bank most suited to their needs. The hope is that this would incentivise banks to improve their service offering.

Under the new rules, firms will have to publish information related to the following aspects of service:

clear information about the account opening process and information about how long it takes to open an account and gain access to specified services; time taken to replace a lost, stolen or stopped debit card; time taken to organise third-party access to an account under power of attorney; identifying how and when various services can be accessed and whether 24-hour help is available for certain matters; and information about the number of major operational matters that firms have reported to the FCA. Current account providers will have to publish information on when and how services and helplines are available and numbers of operational and security incidents from 15 August 2018.

The rest of the information, including details on how long it takes to open an account and replace a debit card, has to be published from February 2019.

New rules of dating

The Competition and Markets Authority (the "CMA") has opened an investigation into suspected breaches of consumer protection law by an online dating operator. The CMA is concerned about potential unfair contract terms and unfair commercial practices including, amongst other things, cancellation and variation of contract terms. While the CMA has not reached a final view on its investigation, a brief recap of the CMA guidance in relation to variation and cancellation is helpful to understand the basis of the CMA's investigation and whether the terms are likely to fall foul of the Consumer Protection from Unfair Trading Regulations 2008, the Consumer Contract Regulations 2013, and the Consumer Rights Act 2015.

The CMA considers that terms are always likely to be considered unfair if...

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