EFRAG, the European Financial Reporting Advisory Group, was established in 2001 with the aim of advising the European Commission (EC) on the suitability of the International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS) as set by the International Accounting Standards Board (IASB). EFRAG’s mission is to ensure that European views on the matter are taken into account in
Traditionally, in most EU Member States, people count on the state-based pension. Only in big companies occupational pension schemes are accepted more broadly if not compulsory. In many Members States, personal pension products are little used because of complexity, high fees, not transparent contract clauses and recently the low interest rate phase, which reduces the
20 October 2017 – For years now, different research studies and reports by BETTER FINANCE have far too often come to the same conclusion: EU citizens as savers and investors are left in the dark with respect to the past performance and costs of the financial products they invest in, meaning that, more often than
19 October 2017 – BETTER FINANCE elected Jella Benner-Heinacher, the Deputy Chief Executive of Germany’s oldest and largest association for private investors DSW, as its new President. “I am honoured by the trust put in me. Working at the European level is certainly one of the most important, but also the most challenging, tasks in
Earlier this year BETTER FINANCE called on policy makers to put an end to financial abuses by ensuring better public enforcement of conduct of business rules and introducing an EU-wide framework for Collective Redress in order to facilitate effective private enforcement. Now the European Commissioner for Justice and Consumer Affairs is calling for an EU-wide
The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) recently repeated the Public Authorities’ mantra that citizens need to take their responsibility with regard to their pension savings, stating that “in light of the challenges facing pension systems, the only long-term solution for achieving higher retirement income is to contribute more and for longer periods”. Whereas
Pension savings appear to be one of the few retail services where neither the customers nor the public supervisors are properly informed about the real net performance for customers of the services rendered. There is no recent and comprehensive study on the real net pension savings returns for EU countries. Even OECD data is unfortunately
On the investor’s side, setting a structure to be followed by the issuer in each section would enhance comparability, transparency and the protection. In order to provide clear and easily readable documents for investors, information displayed should follow the same order in order to harmonize the content and the format of all prospectuses.
BETTER FINANCE welcomes the new Prospectus Regulation and the Technical Advice (Level 2) submitted by ESMA. The Technical advice submitted by ESMA reflect the purpose of the Prospectus Regulation: to remove administrative and costs burden for companies and in particular for Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs) while enhancing investors protection. Investors should be provided with
With regard to the Prospectus Regulation, completeness “relates to undertaking an examination of the prospectus to ensure that it all contains all the information required”. The scrutiny criteria for completeness is relevant for the protection of investors since it will ensure them that all the disclosure items will be included in the prospectus, ensuring that