GE CitizenshipGE Money Standards
Our 2008 Progress
- Overview of GE exposure to financial market crisis.
- Summary of strategic relationships with sovereign wealth funds.
- Summary of GE value chain in midst of global recession.
- Developed feature/case study on project finance.
- Completed Corporate Audit Staff audit of 16 GE Money Platforms to track implementation
- of responsible lending standards.
- Rolled out quarterly responsible lending metrics to track performance of each business in responsible lending.
- Made responsible lending part of annual Session D (Global Compliance) reporting.
- “Certification“ and adherence to responsible lending.
As the company began work in 2006 to create global responsible lending standards, we embarked on a series of stakeholder dialogues to get a view of the role of responsible lending standards, to understand what changes should be made to the standards and to better understand how GE compares to competitors in this area. The majority view was that while governments legislate for the baseline of good practice, companies should self-regulate above and beyond this. With this information in hand, GE Money created company-wide standards that would become a minimum mandatory requirement, even for countries where government rules are less stringent.
The result of this initiative is five global responsible lending standards:
- APR Distribution — Establishes a market-appropriate Annual Percentage Rate (APR) range per product, monitors for accounts that are above the upper limit and takes appropriate actions.
- Fees — Ensures that all fees are clearly and fully disclosed to customers.
- Clear language — Uses clear and simple terms that help customers make informed decisions about products and services. This standard addresses the business’s disclosure practices, and the value it puts on transparency.
- Customer indebtedness — Ensures that we do not knowingly sell products that the customer cannot afford.
- Financial difficulty — Ensures the company has a process to respond to customers whose circumstances have changed and who are experiencing financial difficulty.
In addition to finalizing the global standards, GE Money also took the following steps:
- Appointed Responsible Lending (RL) leaders in each of its business regions as well as a global RL leader and engaged cross-functional ownership of implementing the above standards. These leaders meet regularly to share best practices and discuss issues that are facing the business.
- Designed RL training that all GE senior leaders globally have to complete.
- Initiated CEO certification — Every six months the GE Money business CEOs must certify that the business is in compliance with:
- – Anti-money laundering rules
- – Information security protocols
- – Regulatory compliance
- – Responsible lending