Individual retirement accounts and individual retirement security accounts may be offered in a form of a bank account that is concluded with the use of model contracts. But model contracts may contain abusive clauses in particular with regard to determining the amount of and making changes in interest rates and fees charged by banks. We aim to identify and analyze the compliance risk connected with inappropriate terms of retirement accounts offered to individuals and its consequences for banks and savers. We proved that model contracts used by banks to conclude retirement accounts include abusive clauses that may result in severe sanctions, both legal and economic ones. We used the following research methods: economic and legal analysis of individual retirement products offered by banks, critical analysis of the literature, case law of the SACC and entries in the register of NKU kept by the President of the OCCP as well as decisions of the President of the OCCP.

The article deals with the issue of protecting Polish consumers who are customers of non-domestic lenders (i.e lenders with no registered seats on the territory of the Republic of Poland) granting facilities to Polish consumers. The protection is shown in the context of public oversight over non-domestic lenders, exercised as part of the supervision over the financial market. The purpose of the article is to analyze on what legal basis those non-domestic entities conduct their activities in Poland and how enforcement is used to ensure their compliance with the applicable provisions of law regarding taking up and running of activities in this area, as a part of the supervision of the Polish Financial Supervision Authority (Komisja Nadzoru Finansowego, KNF) over such entities.

The article is also an attempt to answer the following questions — are competences of KNF as lenders supervisory authority under the supervision of the financial market sufficient to provide consumers with protection while using services on the consumer credit market in Poland?; Is it indirect (or direct) protection and should the role of KNF in this respect be changed?

The aim of this paper is to present in general terms (and not in detail) the challenges concerning the functioning of the institutional structure of consumer protection on the financial market in Poland (consumer protection network on the financial services market), especially in view of the need to counteract the abuses revealed in the post-crisis reality, aimed at providing them with real protection.

It is not about detailed characteristics of legal regulations concerning the status and competences of already functioning bodies and institutions of consumer protection of financial services, but only about indicating problems leading in general dimension  and  certain  proposals  of  conceptual  changes  in  the  construction  of  this  infrastructure  of  the  consumer protection of financial services and its location within the framework of the financial market safety network.

The author, taking as a starting point the current infrastructure of consumer protection in the financial market in Poland and the tasks and competences of the bodies creating it (without their analysis, however), makes an attempt to answer questions that should be undertaken (both in the regulatory and actual), so that these entities create from the institutional (subjective  and  competence)  point  of  view  a  coherent  system,  and  the  consumer  protection  network  in  the  financial market  was  a  guarantee  of  the  actual  enforcement  of  consumer  financial  market  law  (consumer  protection  law  for financial services), both in the public and private legal dimension.

In particular, the author will propose the components of which this institutional structure should be built and what forms of  cooperation  between  them  would  be  indicated,  in  particular  whether  there  is  a  need  to  create  new  bodies  (new elements)  of  this  structure  equipped  with  additional  competences  and  tasks?  (without,  however,  taking  into  account detailed considerations in this respect, but only at the level of the general concept). Due to the limited framework of the present  study,  it  is  not  the  Author's  goal  to  present  exhaustively  the  entire  concept  and  proposal  of  changes  in  the structure (network) of consumer protection in the financial market, but only to signal the need and necessity to undertake a discourse, both at the theoretical and practical level in this area.