03 December 2014

EIOPA publishes its third Consumer Trends Report

The report provides an overview of trends in various Member States of the EU that may have led, or may lead in the future, to consumer detriment in the insurance and pensions markets.

Among the main trends are:

• Misleading advertising and sales literature, and in complete or difficult to understand information on costs and charges
• Increased cross-selling (tying & bundling) and sale of add-ons linked to large number of financial products such as protection related to loans, debit and credit cards where competition for the add-on produ ct may not be effective and/or the add-on product is of poor added value
• Poor claims-handling or claims management in particular in the area of motor insurance;
• Conflicts of interests, where life insurers select underlying funds based on the highest commissions received from fund managers
• Insurers’ sales incentive schemes leading to mis-selling, due to insufficient steps being taken to safeguard the fair treatment of customers, reflecting failures in the proper identification and managemen t of conflicts of interests

It is important to note that the trends identified by EIOPA in previous reports have provided a valuable basis for EIOPA to identify, prioritise and develop targeted policy proposals. In that respect EIOPA has published:

• An Opinion on Payment Protection Insurance (PPI), a imed at drawing attention to consumer protection issues regarding PPI products and analysing detailed information on existing national practices in Member States. It noted that that in a number of jurisdictions, significant cases of mis-selling have occurred, to the detriment of consumers and negatively impacting the reputation of the insurance sector as a whole. NSAs have acted in response to EIOPA’s request for them to investigate their national markets
• Guidelines on Complaints-Handling by insurance intermediaries, which provide a framework for insurance intermediaries when handling complaints about their activities, including the provision of information to consumers and procedures for responding to complaints
• An Opinion on Beneficiary Protection Arrangements regarding Life Insurance Contracts, which outlines the different beneficiary protection approaches already in place in some Member States, aimed at ensuring pay outs to beneficiaries where due
• A Good Practices Report on Comparison Websites, where the current focus is on verifying the transparency of, and basis for, the comparisons and rankings, as part of promoting transparency, simplicity and fairness for Internet users in the market for online comparisons of products

Press release

Full report

© EIOPA