08 June 2017 – There is an abundance of investable private capital in Europe, with households desperately looking for positive real returns on their long-term savings in an ongoing climate of low interest rates, high fees, high complexity of investment products and financial repression. BETTER FINANCE fully supports the CMU initiative as it places EU
In its final advice to the European Commission (EC) on the further development of a single European Union market for personal pension products (PPPs), the European Insurance and Occupational Pensions Authority (EIOPA) stressed that attempts to harmonise existing Directives and rules across the different sectors and EU Member States would be counter-productive and unnecessarily complicate
Savings accounts still constitute the most widely-used (35% of all financial savings of EU household ) financial products in Europe and together represent roughly € 10 trillion of household savings. Unfortunately EU citizens are now losing money in 11 out of 18 Member States studied in a new report, with negative real returns on their
The outlook for European citizens saving money for their pensions is far from encouraging. Although lower inflation rates across the EU slightly improved real returns, current low interest rates (lower still following the latest ECB cut down to 0,05%) combined with heavy fees render pension savings markets extremely vulnerable to even the slightest increase in
Brussels, 25 October 2013 – For the first time Financial Repression was the topic of an international conference organised in Vienna, attended by prominent authorities from the world of finance. Financial Repression is broadly defined as anything Public Authorities do to force money to flow to the governments’ coffers instead of going into the real
On the 29th of April, the Financial Times published an article on the varying quality of advice for European investors, found by the EC`s "Study on the distribution systems of retail investment products". Commenting on the grim picture painted by the study, BETTER FINANCE Managing Director Guillaume Prache stated that: "It is difficult for individual
Whereas the UK was widely considered the leading force of the Capital Market Union (CMU), Theresa May’s speech on (date)… seems to announce serious turbulence ahead. Launched in 2014, the CMU intends to reduce barriers to cross-border investing and promote bond markets instead of bank lending. Theresa May declared that there will be no
Politicians, investor rights groups and asset managers have made an eleventh-hour attempt to convince European officials to amend proposed investment rules over fears they could be “vastly misleading” and a “huge blow to investor protection”. The new rules which are set to come into force next year and are aimed at making investment products safer
The savings management industry does not at all satisfy Europeans concludes the annual survey of the European Commission stating that the investment industry, and particularly services related to pension savings, came last of 32 on the services satisfaction index. BETTER FINANCE confirmed this bad result by reporting that European investment funds have returned 1.2% less
In the current low interest environment, life insurance remains the better option for French long–term or pension savers (if invested in euros), with returns (on average around 2,5% gross in 2014) superior to other products. Still, to determine the real return, costs, taxes and inflation need to be taken into account. According to the study