OREANDA-NEWS.  September 15, 2014. Deputy Head of FAS Department for Control over Financial Markets, Lilia Belyaeva, took part in the XII International Banking Forum - “Russian Banks — XXI Century” organized by the Association of Russian Regional Banks.

Representatives of the State Duma, the Federation Council, the Bank of Russia, the Ministry of Finances, other ministries and agencies, the Russian Union of Industrialists and Entrepreneurs as well as the leading financial market analysts, top-managers of banks and companies took part in the event.

Attendees discussed, in particular, current and strategic objectives of the financial sector for the period of up to 2020 and methods for enhancing its sustainability as well as regulation and control over financial institutions under the conditions of globalization of financial markets.

Lilia Belyaeva took part on the Round Table “Availability and Quality of Financial Services as a Factor of Economic Growth in Russian Regions” and made a presentation on particular aspects of promoting financial services.

She pointed out that “to increase availability of services on such socially-important markets as the market of payments from individuals, it is especially important to develop competition and, first of all, improve the system of accepting state payments, particularly, made through the Unified portal of state and municipal services (UPSS) and official departmental web-sites.

It includes increasing transparency of the conditions for engaging banks in payment acceptance since at the moment such conditions are not public, particularly, accepting payments through UPSS. She emphasized that “the conditions, including technical and technological ones, should not be excessive and must apply in an equal manner to all banks wishing to accept payments”.

According to the speaker, the presented FAS position was forwarded to the Ministry of Communications under the framework of executing the instructions from the Government of the Russian Federation to look into the issue of extending the practice of using UPSS for accepting non-tax payments from citizens, including the procedure for credit organizations joining its infrastructure.

Lilia Belyaeva also outlined the problem of decreased quality and availability of voluntary insurance services due to the existing procedure of cooperation between banks and insurance companies, proposing to pay overrated remuneration to banks for exercising the functions of insurance agents in the course of granting loans to individuals. To confirm a negative aspect of such cooperation for individuals that bear the costs for paying for such remuneration, a FAS representative described relevant judicial practice and presented FAS proposals for solving the problem.