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The Defender is launching bank and insurance companies testing. The elderly cannot be denied financial services just for their age, yet the Defender encounters such cases. That is why he has launched an inquiry of accessibility of financial products to the elderly which will also include testing on bank branches using undercover assistants. In 2012 and 2013 there was an increase in the number of complaints from the elderly regarding inaccessibility of some financial products due to their age. The elderly point to the fact that the financial institutions set certain age limits for some products which then prevent elderly clients from being able to get them. The most frequent denials of applications in banks encountered by the elderly relate to the issuance of credit cards although they may be long-standing clients, gold payment card holders or solvent clients having both Czech koruna as well as foreign currency accounts. A typical reason for the application for issuance of a credit card was a stay abroad with the intention of renting a car there which requires a person to produce a credit card. The age barrier in banks was also encountered by the elderly in cases of various loan or credit applications. In insurance companies the alleged discrimination refers especially to life insurance, accident insurance and travel insurance which were provided to the elderly under considerably disadvantageous conditions, sometimes even with a 100 per cent surcharge. The Public Defender of Rights is aware that there may be reasons which justify the use of some age limits in particular cases. Banks are also obliged by law to proceed with caution, to refrain from business activities which might harm the interests of savers of threaten the bank's stability. They are just as well not allowed to enter into contracts which would be “conspicuously disadvantageous” for the bank or those which would oblige the bank to economically unjustified performance. On the other hand, however, it is also true that financial services are offered and provided to the clients and they fall under the consumer protection regulation and the ban on discrimination. Therefore in general it applies that the elderly are equally entitled to participate in social life, to use means obtained from loans to finance their needs, have the right to take out insurance and the like, just as the clients from any other age bracket. Given that the issue of possible age discrimination in terms of access to services has not been systematically mapped in the Czech Republic yet, the Public Defender of Rights decided to carry out an across-the-board research which would examine the accessibility of financial products to elderly clients. The research will take place from June to August of this year. The results will be published in September. The first part of the research will be carried out in the form of an anonymous questionnaire survey. The Defender will address all banks and foreign bank branches, all insurance companies and branches of foreign insurance companies and selected non-bank providers of financial services. In the second part of the research a method of situation testing with the objective of checking the accessibility of financial services to the elderly in practice will be take place. This way the procedures of thirteen key banks in the Czech market oriented on small clients, two insurance companies and four non-bank institutions will be examined. Within the situation testing a selected company will be visited or otherwise addressed by an undercover assistant filing an application for the issuance of a credit card or a short-term consumer loan, in cases of insurance companies it will be travel insurance. The selected branches will be distributed across the entire territory of the Czech Republic. The goal of the research is not to evaluate the practice of individual financial institutions for the purpose of their sanctioning. It is a systematic check of equal treatment of the applicants for financial services and verification of the fact if the elderly as an age group are discriminated against without legitimate reasons in terms of their consumer rights. The data on the entities in question will therefore remain anonymous. The resulting report should serve as the basis for a broader discussion on the quality of provision of financial services to consumers. The research has got official support of the Czech National Bank, the Czech Trade Inspection Authority, the Financial Arbiter, the Czech Banking Association, the Czech Association of Insurance Companies and the Czech Leasing and Finance Association.