Finance Watch called on the European Commission on Tuesday 3 March to act on financial exclusion and made several recommendations in its report "Financial Exclusion: Making the invisible visible".
"Our study shows clearly that over the last decade the range of EU citizens and residents who struggle to access financial services has increased. This highlights the increasingly urgent need for an inclusive EU market for financial services", said Olivier Jérusalmy, a researcher within the organisation.
After conducting several surveys and interviews in 23 European countries, the organisation identified the groups most vulnerable to financial exclusion and identified three barriers they face in accessing services, namely: legal requirements, such as identity and residence documents; financial requirements, including partially hidden costs; and lack of skills to access them.
The solution to tackling all these problems at once, according to Finance Watch, would be to design and market "basic financial services" that enable all citizens to be socially included in society. These products should be simple, easy to use, offered at a reasonable cost and an easy change of service provider should be guaranteed, they say.
Another way forward, they say, is to revise the Payments Account Directive to ensure access to a minimum level of service for all citizens. The text could, for example, adapt the level of access to services to the level of documents provided as part of the identification process, the organisation suggests.
It also proposes to revise the 2008 Consumer Credit Directive to bring it up to date. One of its concerns relates to the use of credit registers that expose individuals with a history of default to the risk of exclusion. Thus, in its view, any reference to the credit register in lending practices should be eliminated.
See the report: https://bit.ly/2x1BQzf (Original version in French by Marion Fontana)