We are happy to announce that Christian Gülich, EU Policy Officer at the Bund der Versicherten (BdV), one of BETTER FINANCE’s German members, was appointed to the European Insurance and Occupational Pensions Authority’s Insurance and Reinsurance Stakeholder Group. For more information, please see EIOPA’s website. With 17 user-side expert members from among its ranks in
Based on an article written for Managermagazin, by Axel Kleinlein, BETTER FINANCE President and Head of the Association of the Insured (BdV), Germany’s largest consumer protection organisation for the insured. A consumer advocate enthusiastic about an unsuccessful defence minister? That may sound surprising… but let me try to explain myself. As the newly elected president of
Inspections by the British accounting watchdog FCR have revealed that the overall quality of the work carried out by ”the big four” in the UK has not improved since last year and that none of them is meeting quality control standards. The regulator has criticised the auditors for routinely failing to challenge managers and for
BETTER FINANCE’s Romanian member organisation AURSF (the Association of Romanian Financial Services Users) has teamed up with the largest non-banking source of debt financing (consumer credit) in Romania to promote financial education, responsible lending and borrowing. The campaign was launched in June with the publication of a small guide to financial terms and concepts to
With Mario Draghi, the president of the European Central Bank, stepping down at the end of October, the ECB faces a credibility problem with doubts on whether his replacement will be up to the job. While according to Ferdinando Giugliano (Bloomberg), as long as question marks remain over who will be the next president, the
Shortly after its release, the new research by BETTER FINANCE on the Correlation between Costs and Performance of EU Retail Equity Funds has been picked up by media outlets across Europe. The study is based on a very large sample of funds (1,970 active funds), with BETTER FINANCE covering equity funds domiciled in France, Luxembourg
Daniel Brocklebank, UK director of Orbis Investments, warned the audience at the 72nd CFA Institute Annual Conference: Bad incentives lead to bad results, particularly when it comes to investment management. With that in mind, Brocklebank suggested that it was worth considering incentives, especially since they affect asset manager behaviour. According to him, while management fees
BETTER FINANCE is pleased to announce that its Executive Director Aleksandra Mączyńska has been selected as a member of the EU Ecolabelling Board (Expert Group E00374). The group, consisting of EEA Member States’ Ecolabelling Board representatives and other relevant stakeholders, is currently chaired by Henning Scholtz, Head of Environmental Labelling of RAL, Germany. The aim of
“It’s true that political salesmen can market a mythology and iconography that entice people into privileging a religion, ethnicity, or nation as their fundamental identity. With the right package of indoctrination and coercion, they can even turn them into cannon fodder. That does not mean that nationalism is a human drive. Nothing in human nature
Barclays, Citigroup, JP Morgan, MUFG and Royal Bank of Scotland were fined a combined 1.07 billion euros) by the European Union on Thursday for rigging the multitrillion-dollar foreign exchange market. According to the European Commission, individual traders at the banks involved, formed two cartels to manipulate the spot foreign exchange market for 11 currencies, including