Reykjavik, 27 June 2014 – Gabriel Bernardino, the Chairman of the European Insurance and Occupational Pensions Authority (EIOPA), gave an impassioned and encouraging speech on « EIOPA’s priorities for consumer protection » at the BETTER FINANCE conference in Reykjavik, organised in cooperation with its Icelandic member, the Icelandic Savers Association. « The reality is, » Mr Bernardino
On Friday 4 October 2013 EIOPA announced the appointment of the members of their stakeholder groups. Whilst reserving judgement until more information is available, EuroFinUse is cautiously optimistic about the new composition, although much could still be improved. Please read here the press release.
On the 11th of March The Sunday Times published an article on closet indexers in light of the recent news of UK asset managers returning £34m following an investigation by the FCA uncovering widespread evidence of funds charging expensive management fees for doing little more that tracking their benchmark. The article refers to important work
Financial Times: Value of saving via pension funds questioned Consumers who save via a pension fund are financially worse off than if they had invested the money themselves, according to new research. High fees, opaque commissions and taxes have been criticised for putting the retirement incomes of millions of European savers at risk. Read more
Celebrities among fund managers are becoming rare. Fund management gurus built their success over the long term as did Warren Buffett, an example to almost all fund managers. With the younger generation, fund management celebrities have lost in popularity and appear less in the media. There are multiple reasons why these gurus do not resonate
BETTER FINANCE was mentioned in several articles covering the story by Reuters on Closet Index Trackers. Reuters & Yahoo Finance: "EU watchdog considers action against "closet" tracker funds." Closet Indexing Finally on ESMA’s Radar? For years now the active management of investment fund portfolios has suffered negative criticism with financial headlines relegating the failing practice
Guillaume Prache, BETTER FINANCE’s Managing Director answered some questions to Revue-Banque regarding his position on the third pillar of the Banking Union, the bail-in and TLAC. Read the full interview in french here.
When charges, inflation and taxes are taken into account, the real returns of "assurance-vie" contracts – life insurance policies widely used by households as a means to obtain additional resources at retirement age in France – are very low and "may in fact be losing money". "60 millions de consommateurs", the magazine of the French National Institute of Consumer Affairs, based itself on BETTER FINANCE’s calculation
According to The Guardian, a group of UK Labour MPs believes pension savers should be allowed to question retirement fund managers and to elect trustees to occupational schemes. The demand follows a string of critical reports on the pension fund industry including BETTER FINANCE’s "Pension Savings: The Real Return" in which it is concluded that in Britain, pension
Juan Manuel Viver, Policy Officer at BETTER FINANCE, was quoted in Europolitics on European long-term investment funds (ELTIFs). Since the negotiations are now entering the final phase, the main concern is the protection of retail investors. Juan Manuel Viver belives ELTIFs are not really "appropriate for small investors since these funds are not very liquid". "Since these new funds are