February 25, 2014. Ural Federal District's Federal Arbitration Court confirmed the fact that OTP-Bank was violating consumer rights, Sverdlovsk Region division of Rospotrebnadzor reports.

It was detected in the course of an analysis of the bank's activity that OTP Bank's voluntary life and health insurance package for the borrowing party had a proviso on charging the borrower for joining this program, which is actually against the current legislation.

The program also states that, in case the insurance agreement gets canceled before the end of the term upon the insured party's initiative, the money paid earlier for the organization of the insurance and the insurance fees are not paid back. Still, under the current legislation, the amount that is to be paid back to the insured depends on the reason the borrowing party gives for deciding to cancel the agreement. In case a consumer insists on the service being terminated due to a violation of consumer rights (including a violation through infringing upon the customer's consumer rights and not supplying accurate information on the services rendered), the insurer must pay the money for the service back and compensate for all the losses.

What is more, the loan+insurance scheme is designed by the bank in such a way that the consumer does not actually get access to all the data that are necessary to make an informed choice about the type of insurance services, the amount of insurance premium, the nature of the service, and the bank's obligations.

For one, the borrowing party is obliged to pay for the organization of the life and health insurance and for compensation of the life and health insurance premium that the bank has paid; yet the bank provides no data on the size of either of the said payments.