In the Single Market, retail investments are lagging behind as EU savers lack understanding of financial products and confidence in investment intermediaries as well as being put off by an overall lack of attractive results from the industry. With this in mind, the European Parliament (EP) has attempted, on several occasions (see here and here), to improve the market in retail financial services, with the adoption of its own-initiative Report on Retail Financial Services representing the latest attempt.
The initiative enjoyed broad support from the EP, as the report identified obstacles to consumer protection, efficiency and competition in the financial markets. According to Sven Giegold, member of the EP ECON Committee, the EP now calls on the Commission:
- to put forward legislative proposals for better regulation of investment products for consumers, starting with clear and comprehensive information for clients, harmonisation of consumer protection laws applicable to financial companies, and to ‘stop the aggressive sales strategies’;
- to make us of its supervisory powers and ‘identify and publicise existing obstacles to international payment transactions by means of covert test purchases’;
BETTER FINANCE is supporting the conclusions of the EP Report, which are fully in line with BETTER FINANCE's own report on the mis-selling of financial products, published last May.
Read here:
- Sven Giegold’s post: European Parliament calls on Commission to foster competition and consumer protection in financial markets.
- The EP’s own-initiative Report on Retail Financial Services.
- BETTER FINANCE’s Report – A major enforcement issue: The mis-selling of financial products.