Forum Malta fl-Ewropa and the Institute of Financial Services (Malta) yesterday held a Business Breakfast Workshop on the theme ‘Retail Financial Services – Working with a single market mindset in a post-euro context’, making particular reference to a European Commission green paper on retail financial services.
The green paper outlines policies on the retail financial services sector, which could open up the European market to more cross-border competition.
Finance Parliamentary Secretary Tonio Fenech told the workshop that the Green Paper was a welcome development to the 2005 White Paper on Financial Services Policy as well as other Commission initiatives to assess the single market in retail financial services.
The Parliamentary Secretary stressed the importance of achieving further market integration through the introduction of legislation or corrective measures where there was a lack of competitiveness or alternatively, to enable market competitiveness. A major hurdle for consumers when shopping around for financial services was the lack of information on the product on offer, and that the Commission’s Green Paper sought to provide consumers with tools enabling them to shop around and take the most informed decisions before committing to a particular product or service.
Timothy Grange from the UK’s Financial Services gave a brief overview of the salient issues presented by the Green Paper. Mr Grange believes in the intrinsic potential for consumers to shop cross-border and that there is much “potential to be unlocked” from a systematic examination of competition in partnership with national competition authorities. He also applauded the Commission for conducting consumer testing in relation to pre-contractual information requirements in certain areas. However, he also stated that having consumer protection laws on level playing fields across the European market was not a practical possibility because this would definitely not further integration. In particular, Mr Grange reiterated that the Commission has not yet made a convincing case on consumer protection.