European financial and insurance sector supports objective of boosting retail participation in financial markets, but raises multiple concerns on far-reaching measures in the RIS proposals.

Representatives of the European financial and insurance sector (AMICE, EACB, EAPB, EBF, EFAMA, ESBG, EUSIPA, Insurance Europe) today issued a Joint Industry Statement on the impact of the European Commission’s Retail Investment Strategy (RIS).

The signatories are strongly supportive of the objective of boosting retail participation in financial markets, in particular the goal of encouraging shift towards ‘digital-by-default’ communication, as well as the effort to streamline disclosures and to further promote financial literacy.
However, the signatories note that many measures in the proposals are far-reaching and raise multiple concerns. In summary:

• there are many prohibitions to the payment of commissions in the RIS proposals
• the proposals deviate from the stated goals and are highly likely to discourage consumer engagement and will make the consumers’ investment process longer, more complex and more burdensome
• the proposed introduction of benchmarks contradicts the core goal of the investment process
• the implementation timeline is unfeasible.

Read the full statement.