GDV positions itself for the trilogue on the EU Retail Investor Strategy
Negotiations in the trilogue on the EU Retail Investor Strategy are expected to begin in Brussels in the autumn of 2024. The German Insurance Association (GDV) brings insurers' arguments into the negotiations.
German Insurers support the aim of the Retail Investment Strategy (RIS) to increase the participation of Europeans in the capital markets. To achieve this, the new regulatory framework for distribution must provide easy access to regulated advice, make the flow of information more practical and comprehensible, and ensure that regulators can identify outliers that do not offer value for money.
Although there are good approaches in the draft, the current proposals also contain provisions that run counter to the aim of increasing the participation of retail investors in the capital markets. In particular, German insurers see the risk that this will make individual decision-making processes longer and business processes more complicated. The bureaucratic burden for product manufacturers and brokers will also increase significantly.
The goal of the Retail Investor Strategy can only be achieved if the European institutions succeed in reaching a pragmatic and balanced compromise in the trilogue. The chances of this happening are good if the European Commission's intention to reduce reporting requirements and bureaucracy for companies by at least 25% is also supported by Parliament and the Council. German insurers are relying on the costs and benefits of new requirements being carefully weighed up in the negotiations. This applies in particular to reporting, documentation and retention obligations.
In general, the new rules for the sale of insurance and financial investment products should be simplified. Clear rules must be defined in the legal text itself. Additional regulations in downstream legislation (so-called “Level 2”) should be kept to a minimum.
The Member States need sufficient time to transpose the new requirements into national law. This also applies to insurers and brokers. The start of all implementation and application deadlines should therefore be linked to the publication of the downstream legislation associated with the Retail Investor Strategy, as only then will the complete legal framework be known.
The German insurance industry will work to ensure that further discussion focuses on the opportunities offered by the Retail Investor Strategy. All details can be found in the statement below:
