28 June 2013

EIOPA/Bernardino: European Supervisory Authorities - Our joint effort in enhancing consumer protection in Europe

Consumer protection is a high priority for all three institutions. The ESAs consider it very important to have a platform where organisations and experts dealing with protection of financial services' consumers can meet, exchange their views and share expertise.

Discussions focused on the work of the Joint Committee in the area of consumer protection and financial innovation. The Joint Committee was established on 1 January 2011 with the aim to serve as a forum for information exchange and common work between our institutions. Cross-sectoral consistency is crucial in preventing regulatory arbitrage. The Joint Committee is required under its founding Regulations to “prevent regulatory arbitrage and promote equal conditions of competition”. But sectoral specificities also need to be properly taken into account.

Consumer protection is a very important part of Joint Committee work. To this effect, within the Joint Committee a specific Sub-Committee on Consumer Protection and Financial Innovation was established. The Financial Innovation Sub-Committee has set up sub-groups on three main workstreams:

1. Packaged Retail Investment Products – PRIPs;
2. Product Oversight and Governance; and
3. General Consumer Protection.

Firstly, PRIPs - retail investment products - are referred to as an example in founding Regulations of where cross-sectoral consistency should be sought and the PRIPs Sub-Group is accomplishing important milestones in anticipation of the final Level 1 text of the draft Regulation on a Key Information Document for investment products.

Regarding the issue of Product Oversight and Governance, the idea behind this work is to produce a set of cross-sector high-level principles and/or best practice on the product approval process for use by the Boards of financial institutions.

EIOPA chairman Bernardino said: “Regarding the work on general consumer protection, the initial focus has been on complaints-handling. We are taking the Guidelines EIOPA has issued on complaints-handling by insurance undertakings and applying these to the banking and securities sectors. They are essentially a set of important high-level principles on issues such as setting up a complaints management policy and function and registering and reporting on complaints, which could be transposed to virtually any sector of financial services. A public consultation on Guidelines for the banking and securities sectors is due to be published later this year.”

Mr Bernardino concluded his intervention by assuring that the European Supervisory Authorities are fully committed to continuing their work on the enhancement of consumer protection in the EU. But, ESA cannot do it alone: the involvement of consumer and industry representatives through consultations, advice and requests, is essential for their work. And this Consumer Protection Day is a milestone for such cooperation.

Full speech

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