Introduction to Amendments to Template of Standardized Contract for Personal Online Banking Services

01/01/2013

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To protect consumers' rights and for relevant business operators to comply, the Financial Supervisory Commission ("FSC") announced the amendment to "Template of Standardized Contract for Personal Online Banking Services" on June 15, 2006. Subsequently, the FSC issued the "Provisions to Be and not to Be Included in Standardized Contract for Personal Online Banking Services" on October 8, 2012 and as such, the template has been amended accordingly. The major amendments to the template are as follows:
1.	Prescribe additional information that a bank is required to disclose, including the bank's name, customer complaint and service hotline, the bank's website address, etc. (Article 1).
2.	Specify that the provisions of the contract should be interpreted in a way in favor of the consumers when there is any controversy (Article 2).
3.	Specify that a bank should specify in the contract the services it offered andshould be liable for any inaccurate information posted on its online banking website (Article 5).
4.	Specify that a bank should provide a mechanism for clients to reconfirm the accuratecy of important information set forth in trading electronic documents (Article 7).
5.	Specify that a bank should not charge fees for items not set forth in the contract (Article 10).
6.	Specify that if a bank raises fees, it should provide options for client to express his/her/its agreement/disagreement thereto on its webpage; and that the effective date of any fee increase should not be earlier than the start day of the following year since the announcement and notice (Article 10).
7.	Conditions were added to Paragraph 3 of Article 15 on the circumstances where a bank's liability for indemnity will be relieved in case a client's password is misused by others or stolen based on the legal principle of risk sharing and to urge the client to pay attention to any unusual changes in his/her/its account. For example, circumstances under which a bank could prove a client was wilful or negligent, or, after a certain period has elapsed since the bank duly sent transaction statements to the client by the method agreed by the parties, etc. (Article 15).
8.	The current provision stipulates that a bank should bear the burden of proof where its IT system is hacked by a third party, but the scope of burden of proof is not specified. The provision now is amended to reframe the scope of burden of proof on the bank with its internet banking system security measures (Article 16).
9.	In considering that the client should be given a time period to express his/her/its objection when there is any amendment to a contract, a provision is newly added that clients should be given a seven-day period to express his/her/its objection in the case a contract is amended; and for amenemnt to specific matters, notification in writing or by any method agreed by the parties sixty days prior to the amendment is required (Article 23).