On Wednesday 17 December, the Danish Presidency of the Council of the EU and negotiators from the European Parliament will once again attempt to reach a final agreement on the retail investment legislative package (see EUROPE 13735/30). In the meantime, on Tuesday 25 November in Strasbourg, the negotiators provided certain political clarifications on two targeted aspects of the package and made significant progress on the Packaged Retail and Insurance-based Investment Products (‘PRIIPs’) regulation.
EU co-legislators are now “very close” to an agreement on the PRIIPs regulation, which lays down Key Information Documents (KIDs) for retail investment products, a source told Agence Europe.
In addition, on Tuesday, the negotiators had returned to the provisional agreement reached in September on the framework for supervising financial service providers (see EUROPE 13716/20). The agreement still contained some grey areas for the European Commission, which had requested further details in order to finalise the technical work.
On another front, as part of the “Digital by Default” approach proposed by the Commission, the Council of the EU has introduced an amendment to the revision of the Insurance Distribution Directive (‘IDD’) to strengthen the protection of existing policyholders. Under this amendment, for contracts already in force, any transition from paper to digital communication would be subject to the customer’s explicit consent. According to one source, the European Parliament is expected to align itself with this request from the EU Member States.
Finally, discussions continued last Tuesday on the most politically divisive issues, namely ‘value for money’, the rules governing the ‘investor’s journey’ for retail customers, and the system of retrocessions (‘inducements’) paid by manufacturers to distributors or intermediaries. Uncertainty remains on these points. (Original version in French by Bernard Denuit)