The institution of Armenia’s Financial System Mediator (founded by the Central Bank of Armenia) which serves as a mediator between financial organizations and individual customers, summed up one year of its activities registering hopeful indexes.

At a reception dedicated to the anniversary, Piruz Sargsyan, Financial System Mediator of Armenia, stated that as compared with the beginning of 2009, they received four times more appeals at the end of the year.

“Almost 70 percent of the appeals which underwent final investigation by us were resolved in favor of clients by means of compromise. Hence, we remained loyal to the policy adopted by us – to resolve the dispute rather by means of reconciling the sides than applying to mandatory regulations,” Sargsyan says.

The office of Financial System Mediator, running since January 24, 2009, received 378 appeals, 100 out of them were subject to investigation, and almost 40 of those appeals were resolved in favor of customers, as a result, clients were compensated with more than 23.5 million drams (more than $63,000).

The largest compensation was given to Silva Harutyunyan (a resident of Vanadzor, Lori province) – three million drams (almost $8,000) in return for her car insurance from an insurance company, which was refusing to compensate before the mediator’s interference.

“We simply turned to them, and a miracle happened to us – we got our due - three million drams,” Harutyunyan says.

Many accept that citizens of Armenia have lack of knowledge concerning financial issues.

Ararat Ghukasyan, Chairman of the Union of Armenian Banks (UAB), states that “clients don’t always carefully study the terms included in a contract with a bank.”

Meanwhile, the Financial System Mediator insists that a citizen cannot and does not have to have knowledge equal to the knowledge of a lawyer.

Abgar Yeghoyan, Chairman of ‘Consumers’ Rights Protection’ NGO, says that there are many shortcomings in the sphere, which violate consumers’ rights.

“Very often banks do not properly inform their clients about their (consumers’) rights, for example, they do not say that if there is a problem connected with paying the loan back, then in case of paying at least a small amount of money, the auction of the mortgaged property may be postponed. ”