The State Attorney General’s Office, banking associations (AEB, CECA, and UNACC), and the Bank of Spain have today signed a collaboration protocol to guarantee the autonomy of people with disabilities in relation to banking services and products. The agreement has been signed by the Director General of Financial Conduct and Banknotes of the Bank of Spain, Alberto Ríos; by the Public Prosecutor for Disability and the Elderly, María José Segarra; and by the general secretaries of the three banking associations: Javier Rodríguez, from AEB; Fernando Conlledo, from CECA; and Cristina Freijanes, representing UNACC.
The agreement establishes the channels for banking practices to adapt to the new legal treatment of disability outlined by legislation (Law 8/21), which empowers people with disabilities to make their own decisions autonomously. It also aims to collaborate in progressively promoting the necessary adaptations so that they can operate independently in the banking sector, including, among others, information in accessible language.
The agreement also foresees the establishment of a stable working group, within which the role that the new support figures recognized by the disability law should play will be studied, and the practical issues arising from its application will also be analyzed, combining them with the legal certainty required by banking activity.
The aforementioned regulation eliminated incapacitations and, with them, legal guardians, decriminalizing the lives of people with disabilities and establishing a system for providing support, in which the de facto guardian acquires special relevance. This figure constitutes a type of informal support, without judicial endorsement, typically exercised by family members, and its role in banking operations has already been channeled into a consensual document, which will be published immediately.
The signed protocol envisages a dynamic operation for the working group, which will address the problems that compliance with the law reveals in the day-to-day banking operations, so that not only solutions are proposed, but these are also applied quickly and efficiently for the benefit of the collective, whose rights are one of the duties of the Public Prosecutor’s Office.
The signing ceremony took place at the Bank of Spain’s headquarters. This institution, which signed the agreement as an observer, will participate as such in the working group, given its functions of supervising compliance with customer protection regulations for credit institutions and promoting the inclusion of vulnerable people in banking services.
ASSET PROTECTION PROTOCOL
The Public Prosecutor’s Office and banking associations have also signed a second complementary protocol, which aims to protect the financial interests of people with disabilities or those in certain vulnerable situations.
This agreement articulates fluid communication between banks and the territorially competent public prosecutor’s offices to report situations that may endanger the economic security of the account holder, by revealing instances of abuse or undue influence on their will, which will trigger an investigation by the Public Prosecutor’s Office.
Documentation:
