Date: 28th February 2022
Author: BETTER FINANCE
Type: In the news
The European Union has two initiatives whose main objectives are to "ensure bias-free advice": the "Capital Markets Union" Action Plan and the EU Strategy for Retail Investors.
The dominant distribution model in Europe is commission-based (suppliers pay sales commissions to retail distributors, often surprisingly labelled as "investment advisors"), so it is the conflicts of interest in the distribution of retail investment products that are of most interest here. EU legal jargon calls those "inducements", a term most EU savers do not understand. The former chair of EIOPA used to call them "kickbacks", which is far more understandable for retail investors.
- BETTER FINANCE’s Managing Director, Guillaume Prache, contributed an article to Eurofi’s February magazine. Eurofi is the European Think Tank dedicated to financial services, you can read the full article here (page 205).
- You can read our evidence paper on the detrimental effects of "inducements".