Enquiries

Pre­req­ui­sites for tak­ing ac­tion

What pre­req­ui­sites must be ful­filled for the Con­cil­i­a­tion Board to take ac­tion pur­suant to the FSV?

• The com­plaint must be di­rected against a fi­nan­cial ser­vice provider pur­suant to Art. 10 FSV.
• The client should firstly di­rect his com­plaint to the fi­nan­cial ser­vice provider con­cerned and de­mand an an­swer in writ­ing.

What pre­req­ui­sites must be ful­filled for the Con­cil­i­a­tion Board to take ac­tion for al­ter­na­tive dis­pute res­o­lu­tion pro­ceed­ings pur­suant to the AStG?

• The mat­ter must con­cern a dis­pute be­tween a con­sumer from an EEA mem­ber state (in­clud­ing EU mem­ber states) and a Liecht­en­stein en­ter­prise in the fi­nan­cial ser­vices sec­tor in con­nec­tion with a con­tract for valu­able con­sid­er­a­tion con­cluded be­tween the par­ties.
• The dis­pute must not fall within the ju­ris­dic­tion of an­other al­ter­na­tive dis­pute res­o­lu­tion au­thor­ity within the mean­ing of Art. 4 para. 1 AStG (such as con­cil­i­a­tion bod­ies un­der com­mu­ni­ca­tions, elec­tric­ity mar­ket or gas mar­ket leg­is­la­tion, or the Of­fice of Eco­nomic Af­fairs in its ca­pac­ity as an ADR au­thor­ity in con­sumer pro­tec­tion mat­ters).
• The dis­pute must also not re­late to con­tracts on health ser­vices, dis­putes with pub­lic providers of fur­ther or higher ed­u­ca­tion, non-eco­nomic ser­vices of gen­eral in­ter­est, or con­tracts for the sale of im­mov­able prop­erty.
• Be­fore ap­peal­ing to the Con­cil­i­a­tion Board, the con­sumer should firstly have at­tempted to reach an agree­ment with the en­ter­prise.

Lack of ju­ris­dic­tion

In which cases is the Con­cil­i­a­tion Board un­able to be­come in­volved?

• To clar­ify ques­tions re­lat­ing to the gen­eral busi­ness or tar­iff pol­icy of the in­sti­tu­tion
• To clar­ify ab­stract legal or eco­nomic ques­tions
• If an­other au­thor­ity is al­ready ac­tive in the mat­ter or if a rul­ing has al­ready been is­sued

Pro­ceed­ings be­fore the Con­cil­i­a­tion Board

The client should firstly di­rect his com­plaint to the in­sti­tu­tion or en­ter­prise con­cerned and de­mand an an­swer in writ­ing. If no an­swer is re­ceived or if the an­swer is un­sat­is­fac­tory, the client may ap­proach the Con­cil­i­a­tion Board ver­bally or in writ­ing.
Sim­ple en­quiries are dealt with ver­bally by the con­cil­i­a­tor. In the case of com­plex mat­ters, the Con­cil­i­a­tion Board may ob­tain fur­ther doc­u­men­ta­tion from the client and may also re­quest the in­sti­tu­tion or en­ter­prise to sub­mit a sup­ple­men­tary state­ment. It may also be the case that, due to its high com­plex­ity, a par­tic­u­lar mat­ter is not suit­able for con­cil­i­a­tion pro­ceed­ings, or that the Con­cil­i­a­tion Board re­quests the client to ap­peal di­rectly to the or­di­nary courts for an­other rea­son.

To sim­plify and ex­pe­dite con­cil­i­a­tion pro­ceed­ings, the client should pre­sent the facts clearly and spec­ify pre­cisely which claims he is as­sert­ing against the in­sti­tu­tion or en­ter­prise.
Re­quests for con­cil­i­a­tion must be sub­mit­ted in Ger­man or Eng­lish.

The Con­cil­i­a­tion Board is au­tho­rised to de­mand from the in­sti­tu­tion all in­for­ma­tion nec­es­sary for the as­sess­ment of the case and to in­spect the rel­e­vant doc­u­ments. For this pur­pose, an au­tho­ri­sa­tion from the client is re­quired so that the bank or fi­nan­cial ser­vice provider is re­leased from its statu­tory duty of pro­fes­sional se­crecy vis-à-vis the con­cil­i­a­tor (Dec­la­ra­tion of Au­tho­ri­sa­tion).

Once the Con­cil­i­a­tion Board has ob­tained a com­plete pic­ture of the facts un­der­ly­ing the com­plaint, it sub­mits to the par­ties a pro­posal for set­tle­ment which is non-bind­ing. Both the client and the in­sti­tu­tion or en­ter­prise are free to ini­ti­ate fur­ther legal steps.

If both par­ties agree to the pro­posal for set­tle­ment sub­mit­ted by the Con­cil­i­a­tion Board, they are sub­se­quently bound by this pro­posal.