On September 7th, the Government submitted to Congress a bill (the “Bill”) with the purpose of strengthening consumer protection and granting extraordinary sanctioning powers to the National Consumer Service. Formally, the Project contemplates a series of reforms and modifications to Law No. 19,496 (the “Law”). This initiative arises in response to the political commitment expressed by the Executive to improve consumer protection.
Among the various proposals to modify the Law, we can highlight the one that seeks to regulate and limit the application of the so-called “acceleration clauses”, very commonly used and widely accepted and applied until now. As stated in the Project, this restriction implies considering such clauses as abusive in two specific situations: (1) when they allow the creditor to make credits fully or partially payable in advance for defaults that are not directly related to the specific credit operation and particular default (known as cross default); and (2) when they authorize the creditor to demand from the debtor the total payment of the debt based on a delay or default that represents less than 20% of the capital that is pending payment.
To achieve this purpose, the Project contemplates adding two new clauses to article 16 of the Law, incorporating these new “abusive” scenarios so that, if any of these provisions are incorporated into the adhesion contracts, the sanction would be that said clauses They would not produce any effect and would be considered unwritten.
For more details, you can access all the content of the Project at the following link: https://www.camara.cl/legislacion/ProyectosDeLey/tramitacion.aspx?prmID=16826&prmBOLETIN=16271-03
