On 17 July EIOPA, the European Insurance and Occupational Pensions Authority announced the new composition of its two “stakeholder groups”: the Insurance and Reinsurance one (IRSG), and the Occupational Pensions one (OPSG).
BETTER FINANCE thanks and congratulates EIOPA for successfully “seeking to strengthen representation of consumers”, especially in the OPSG where up to now BETTER FINANCE counted only three retail user representatives.
EIOPA is genuinely trying to live up to the spirit of EU Regulations governing European Financial Supervision that require a balanced proportion between industry representatives and retail user ones. The new composition also moves in the direction of the EU Parliament draft report on the reform of EU financial supervision which proposes and equal number of industry representatives on the one side, and of user and employees of financial institutions on the other (13 each, with the 4 remaining members being independent academics).
However, a better balance between industry and user representatives can only be reached if the ESAs (the European Supervisory Authorities ) implement the EU rules requiring an “adequate” compensation for the non-industry non-profit expert members of the Stakeholder Groups. For such a highly technical and multi-national task - usually without being able to count on the same secretarial, technical and legal support enjoyed by industry representatives - the ESAS provide a compensation limited to €150 per full day of meetings for the very few and poorly resourced retail user experts, three times less than for the ordinary members of the UK FCA Consumer Panel for example.
Read the full press release here.