Mystery shopping allows NCAs to obtain greater insight into the conduct of financial institutions. The latter are then encouraged to take corrective actions and to better comply with applicable requirements, thus eventually enhancing the protection of consumers.
- This publication is the EBA’s first step in the fulfilment of
its new coordination mandate on mystery shopping activities of National
Competent Authorities (NCAs);
- It summarises the most common approaches taken by NCAs on
mystery shopping, presents some lessons learned, and identifies good
practices;
The European Banking Authority
(EBA) published today a Report on the mystery shopping activities of
NCAs. The EBA collated mystery shopping activities by NCAs with a view
to share experiences, learn valuable lessons, and identify good
practices for the benefit of the EBA and NCAs that use or intend to use
mystery shopping in the future.
The Report covers mystery shopping initiatives of NCAs in respect of
products that fall within the scope of action of the EBA’s consumer
protection mandate, which are consumer credit, mortgage credit,
deposits, payment services, electronic money, and payment accounts. It
summarises the most common approaches used by the NCAs, based on the
information collated primarily covering the period from 2015 to 2020. It
does so by reviewing three key characteristics of mystery shopping
activities: their objective, subject matter and product scope, the
methodologies used by NCAs, and the follow-up actions after the mystery
shopping was concluded. The Report also identify some lessons learned
and sets out good practices.
At this stage, only a limited number of NCAs carried out such mystery
shopping activities in their jurisdiction. Moreover, some NCAs reported
that discussions are currently taking place at national level on the
possibility of adding such powers to relevant competent authorities’
mandate, for some of them as part of the implementation of the EU
Consumer Protection Cooperation Regulation.
Regarding the lessons learned, the Report explains that mystery
shopping allows NCAs to obtain greater insight into the conduct of
financial institutions. This, in turn, encourages them to take
corrective actions better to comply with applicable requirements, and
eventually enhances the protection of consumers. Among the good
practices identified by the NCAs, most of them concern common procedural
aspects such as organising training for NCAs’ inspection and
supervisory staff, identifying target customer profiles, and defining
agreed ‘rules’ of customer’s behaviour.
Legal basis
The EBA publishes this Report as a first step to fulfilling the new
mandate it received on 1 January 2020 in Article 9(1) of the EBA
Founding Regulation. The mandates requires the EBA to ‘coordinate
mystery shopping activities of competent authorities, if applicable’.
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