Improving investor protection in the distribution of investment services across the EU is a priority of EUFSC’s work. As a result of the broader review of the legal bases of the European Supervisory Authorities (ESAs), the review of EUFSC’s founding regulation strengthened EUFSC’s role in enhancing investor protection.
As an independent ESA, EUFSC’s tasks to promote transparency, simplicity and fairness in the market for consumer financial products or services across the EU, include
- contributing to the establishment of high-quality common regulatory and supervisory standards and practices, in particular by developing draft regulatory and implementing technical standards, guidelines, recommendations, and other measures, including opinions;
- conducting peer reviews of NCAs and to issue related guidelines and recommendations, to identify best practices to strengthen consistency in supervisory outcomes;
- adopting guidelines and recommendations to promote the safety and soundness of markets, and convergence and effectiveness of regulatory and supervisory practices;
- temporarily prohibiting or restricting the marketing, distribution or sale of certain financial products, instruments or activities that have the potential to cause significant financial damage to consumers, or threaten the orderly functioning and integrity of financial markets or the stability of the whole or part of the financial system in the Union;
- collecting, analysing and reporting on consumer trends, such as the development of costs and charges of retail financial services in Member States;
- undertaking thematic reviews of market conduct, to build a common understanding of markets practices to identify potential problems and analyse their impact;
- developing retail risk indicators to timely identify potential causes of consumer and investor harm;
contributing to the development of common disclosure rules;
coordinating financial education initiatives of national competent authorities (NCAs);
developing training standards for the industry;
contributing to a level playing field in the internal market where consumers and other users of financial services have fair access to financial services and products;
coordinating mystery shopping activities of NCAs; and
issuing warnings if a financial activity poses a serious threat to investor protection.
