Social Innovation in Consumer Protection: Online Education in Alternative Financial Services

Abstract

[Abstract] This chapter focuses on a specific innovation stream in the area of alternative financial services (AFSs), namely online financial education and awareness-raising targeting vulnerable social groups. It explores how the key actors and properties of the selected SI differ in various national contexts. The development of the SI stream in the Czech Republic was influenced by several focal points, in particular changes in socioeconomic conditions that have shaped consumer protection. The scale of AFSs is incredibly large and includes crowdfunding, peer-to-peer lending, rent-to-own stores, and pawnbrokers. While the immediate economic situation affects the strength of demand for AFSs, there are also other important structural conditions which affect the pace, participants, and composition of SI processes taking place in the field. One of them has been described by the concept of welfare regimes.