Ruth PLATO-SHINAR

Professional Appointments

Professor Ruth Plato-Shinar is a Full Professor of Banking Law and Financial Regulation, and the founding Director of the Center for Banking Law and Financial Regulation, at Netanya Academic College, Israel.

She serves on the Academic Advisory Board of the Asian Institute for International Financial Law (AIIFL) at the University of Hong Kong; the Advisory Council of the Centre for Commercial Law Studies (CCLS) at Queen Mary University of London; the Board of the International Academy of Commercial and Consumer Law (IACCL); and is a Fellow Academic Member of the European Banking Institute (EBI).

She also serves as Co-Chair of the Israeli Association of Private Law.

In addition to her academic work, Ruth holds several public positions in Israel. She serves on the Advisory Committee to the Governor of the Bank of Israel and the Licensing Committee of the Supervisor of Banks; chairs the Advisory Committee to the Commissioner of Credit Data; and serves as Deputy Chair of the Advisory Committee to the Commissioner of Capital Markets, Insurance and Savings. She previously served on the Advisory Committee to the Israeli Minister of Finance.

Research Areas

Ruth's primary fields of research are banking law and financial regulation. Her scholarship, including books and articles, addresses bank–customer relationships, consumer financial protection, ethics in finance, payment systems, and various aspects of financial regulation.

In recent years, her research has focused on the intersection of finance, technology, and law, including the use of artificial intelligence (AI) in financial services, open banking and data-sharing frameworks, the digitization and datafication of financial services, digital payments, and central bank digital currencies (CBDCs).

Several landmark decisions of the Israeli Supreme Court in banking law have drawn on her scholarship.

Other Information

Ruth is the author of The Banks’ Fiduciary Duty (in Hebrew), in which she advanced the argument for imposing fiduciary duties on banks toward their retail customers. This position was adopted by the Israeli Supreme Court and has become established case law in Israel.

Her book Banking Regulation in Israel: Prudential Regulation vs. Consumer Protection has attracted significant interest among regulators and policymakers and has been translated into Mandarin.

Her work has earned her numerous awards and research grants, including a special award from the Government of Canada for her contribution to the development of the doctrine of banks’ social responsibility, and a Jean Monnet Centre of Excellence Grant for her research on consumers and SMEs in the Digital Single Market.