Tuesday 8 March 2016

EU Regulatory Framework for Financial Services: BEUC's view

The EU Commission has recently issued a Call for evidence on EU regulatory framework for financial services, aiming to understand the interaction of individual rules and the cumulative impact of all the rules, including overlaps, inconsistencies and gaps.

Responding to the call for evidence, BEUC has reviewed the existing regulatory framework for retail financial services, extending the scope of its review to supervision and enforcement activities and consumer redress schemes. The review has concluded that there are major loopholes and shortcomings in the areas of bank accounts, payment services, consumer and mortgage credit, investment products and that issues such as information disclosure, cross-selling practices and digitization and financial innovation raise special concerns. See BEUC's recommendations for remedying the identified problems and the full text of the response here.

The Commissions' current consultation and the Green Paper (that we reported on earlier) takes account of and complements this initiative.