The debt discharge law is the right path to be followed to help as many borrowers in financial difficulty as possible, given that so far in Romania there is no other law to support them, and banks have been reluctant to come up with concrete solutions to their problems. This was mentioned in a letter
Three Spanish newspapers (Invertia, Expansion and El Pais) report that BETTER FINANCE and the German investor association DSW, one of our member organisations are looking into some possibilities to take legal proceedings at the European level against VW the German manufacturer. Read the full articles here. (in Spanish) – Invertia – Expansion – El pais
Sergio Ermotti, the chairman of UBS, Switzerland’s largest bank, has made a bold statement. “It is ok to take risks and make mistakes as long as they are honest ones”, he said. According to the Financial Times, Ermotti pointed out that the key lies in the difference between breaking the rules and making honest mistakes while
The Swedish government is to become the first in Europe to formally investigate closet-tracking funds that charge high fees for active management but do little more than mimic an index. No other national authority has formally investigated the issue. It has received more attention in Sweden after the Swedish Shareholders Association (Aktiespararna, member organisation of
Financial Times has published an article on customer fees associated with pension funds. The text is based on BETTER FINANCE’s report "Pension Savings: The Real Returns" and critically summarizes the situation across the countries covered in the paper. "It is no wonder, finds the report, that pensions and investments are ranked the worst consumer markets
European public pension schemes are under great strain as a consequence of a greying population and the financial crisis. In order to address this problem, governments are looking into promoting supplementary forms of retirement income. Many issues arise from this that need to be addressed by European policy makers whose legislative decisions directly affect the
On the 24th of April 2018 Le Vif published an article outlining BETTER FINANCE`s stated concerns on poor performance of savings through retirement products, resulting from fees and taxes limiting interest rates. The article was published in light of political authorities` desire to encourage savings through such retirement products. To read full article: "L’épargne-pension ne rapporte pas
On Wednesday, September 14, the packaged retail and insurance-based investment products (PRIIPs) draft legislation, was rejected overwhelmingly by MEPs. PRIIPs was developed to help investors but MEPs declared that the draft legislation was “flawed and misleading”. PRIIPs will now be sent back for revision at the EU Commission. Whereas this delay is bad news
Investment firms charging fees for the active management of funds that in reality behave more like index trackers are coming under renewed pressure in Europe. One campaigner representing four million savers in the region has pledged to “name and shame” so-called closet-indexing funds. Guillaume Prache, the managing director of European investment lobby group BETTER FINANCE,
Juan Manuel Viver, Policy Officer at BETTER FINANCE, reacts to the launch by Lord Hill of the Green Paper on retail financial services in a video released by EU Reporter. Viver underlines the importance of turning our attention to consumers as well, since the Commission focused on stabilizing the financial sector after the crisis but