The purposes of this Act are to promote and advance the social and economic welfare of South Africans, promote a fair, transparent, competitive, sustainable, responsible, efficient, effective and accessible credit market and industry, and to protect consumers, by—
| (a) | promoting the development of a credit market that is accessible to all South Africans, and in particular to those who have historically been unable to access credit under sustainable market conditions; |
| (b) | ensuring consistent treatment of different credit products and different credit providers; |
| (c) | promoting responsibility in the credit market by— |
| (i) | encouraging responsible borrowing, avoidance of over-indebtedness and fulfilment of financial obligations by consumers; and |
| (ii) | discouraging reckless credit granting by credit providers and contractual default by consumers; |
| (d) | promoting equity in the credit market by balancing the respective rights and responsibilities of credit providers and consumers; |
| (e) | addressing and correcting imbalances in negotiating power between consumers and credit providers by— |
| (i) | providing consumers with education about credit and consumer rights; |
| (ii) | providing consumers with adequate disclosure of standardised information in order to make informed choices; and |
| (iii) | providing consumers with protection from deception, and from unfair or fraudulent conduct by credit providers and credit bureaux; |
| (f) | improving consumer credit information and reporting and regulation of credit bureaux; |
| (g) | addressing and preventing over-indebtedness of consumers, and providing mechanisms for resolving over-indebtedness based on the principle of satisfaction by the consumer of all responsible financial obligations; |
[Section 3(gA) inserted by section 2 of Notice No. 1081, GG 42649, dated 19 August 2019]
| (h) | providing for a consistent and accessible system of consensual resolution of disputes arising from credit agreements; and |
| (i) | providing for a consistent and harmonised system of debt restructuring, enforcement and judgment, which places priority on the eventual satisfaction of all responsible consumer obligations under credit agreements. |
