On the 14th of February representatives of the Council of the European Union and the European Parliament reached an agreement on a program to promote the involvement of consumers in policymaking in financial services.  As a reminder, on the 25th of January 2017, the European Parliament’s Committee on Economic and Monetary Affairs approved a report

RESAVER: what is it?  Researchers are a highly skilled workers who are moving from one country to another to carry out their research activities. This can lead to complications regarding the transfer of state pensions and supplementary pensions rights. That is why RESAVER, a state-of-the-art Pan European Pension Plan, has been created, enabling mobile and

The report should be of particular interest to anyone who wishes to look beyond national borders to how policymakers in other EU countries are dealing with similar issues in the areas of life insurance, non-life products (property, accident and health insurance) and old-age provision. The reports looks at questions pertaining to premium income, consumer complaints

Passive asset management houses have enjoyed rapid growth over the past years. As a reminder, passive management describes the management of assets with the aim of tracking an index and achieving returns that reflect the return on the benchmark index. Over the last years, investors have increasingly chosen to invest in those cheaper index funds

On the 12h of January 2017, BETTER FINANCE sent out an open letter to the Slovenian government and to the European Commission’s DG for Financial Stability, Financial Services and Capital Markets Union in support of VZMD. The open letter denounced the amendment of the Financial Instruments Act ( ZTFI-G) which would have damaged the interest

On the 25th of January, the European Parliament’s Committee on Economic and Monetary Affairs approved a report on a proposed regulation by the European Commission to guarantee greater financial stability for Finance Watch and BETTER FINANCE.  This vote follows a proposal from the Commission put forth in June 2016 calling for a regulation supporting the

For some years now, crowdfunding has provided a new form of financing for SMEs, start-ups and not-for-profit projects. The European Parliament, in its resolution on the 9th of July 2015 on building a Capital Market Union underlined the importance of crowdfunding “CMU should create an appropriate regulatory environment that enhances cross-border access to information on

VW’s situation is going from bad to worst. Following the outbreak of the emissions cheating scandal in September 2015, the German carmaker is now declared personae non-grata in Luxembourg pension fund.  The Grand Duchy’s Compensation Fund (set up to hold Luxembourg’s excess pension revenues) has added VW to its exclusion list due to the company’s

On the 7th of February 2017, Guillaume Prache, Managing Director at BETTER FINANCE, Gunnar Ek from Aktiespararna and Marc Mathieu, Secretary General of the European Federation of Employee Share Ownership will be speaking at a roundtable organized by the European Commission’s Directorate General FISMA.   The roundtable will be organized in three sessions with the first

The French Assets Management Association ( AFG)  has asked the French government for a cross-border IORP which would be consistent with the PEPP discussed at the European level.  In a white Paper, the French AM Association (AFG) called for the creation of a cross-border pension fund: “we strongly support the PEPP initiative and we are