The dissertation is devoted to the development of the Methodical principles of consumer protection in the financial services market. The purpose of the dissertation is to improve the theoretical foundations and scientific and methodological approaches to the development of consumer protection in the financial services market of Ukraine.
To assess the quality of consumer protection in the financial services market, the index is calculated, which is calculated as an integral Euclidean distance indicator for 142 countries with different levels of economic development and includes three components: consumers' willingness to be simultaneously active participants the financial services market and take a number of measures aimed at securing their rights, which are identified through the level of financial education of adults; actual involvement of the population in the financial services market; the level of consumer safety in the financial services market. The calculations resulted in an index, the maximum value of which is characteristic of countries with developed economics: Belgium, Great Britain, Canada, Portugal and France.
The developed scientific and methodological approach to determining the distribution of countries according to the components of the Consumer Protection Index in the financial services market provides for two-tier clustering by k-means and Ward methods for 95 countries with different levels of economic development. The results of clustering confirmed the hypothesis that the level of economic well-being of the country does not guarantee a high level of protection of consumer interests in the financial services market. The first cluster is populated by 32 countries, mainly with high levels of economic development, with the exception of South Africa, Malaysia, Latvia, Croatia and Bulgaria; the second – 39 countries, most of the countries with economies in transition, except Italy, Albania, Armenia, Kyrgyzstan, Moldova, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan; the third cluster – 24 countries that are more represented by transition economies (15) and developing countries (9).
There were formalized connection between four latent variables: index of the quality of consumer protection in the financial services market and the three groups of indicators that characterize the overall economic, social level of countries development and levels of government each of which included three explicit variables.
Considering the obtained system of simultaneous structural equations, a positive statistically significant influence of the level of consumer protection on the level of public administration and the general economic situation in the country was revealed. It should be noted that the impact of the index variable on the level of government is stronger than on the overall economic situation. The social development of the country is not statistically dependent on the level of consumer protection in the financial services market.
In order to identify the relationship between financial sustainability indicators and the level of consumer interest protection in the financial services market, a scientific and methodological approach was developed in which five of the thirteen financial indicators were selected using the principal component and correlation analysis method. stability, the impact of which is tested on the consumer protection index in the financial services market by constructing a linear multifactorial regression model. Two indicators have a statistically significant impact on the consumer protection index in the financial services market: the ratio of Tier 1 capital to risk-weighted assets and the ratio of sectoral loans to total loans (for nonresidents).
In order to support the obtained results and to confirm the hypothesis that the index of consumer interest protection in the financial services market is more dependent on the level of state regulation, structural modeling was conducted with the introduction of the corresponding latent variable of financial stability. The results revealed that a statistically significant, direct effect on the index is exerted by the level of government and the economic situation in the country. However, financial stability has a positive effect on the index, but this effect is not statistically confirmed.
Summarizing the analytical and statistical studies conducted on the development of the level of consumer protection in the financial services market of Ukraine, allowed to form a strategic vision of the directions of influence of the state.
Key words: financial services market, consumer protection, consumer protection index, financial literacy, financial involvement, financial security.
