The Revision of the Insurance Mediation Rules at EU Level and its Impact on Consumer Protection

The European Commission has put forward a new proposal for a directive on insurance mediation which should provide for significant changes in practices of selling insurance products and guarantee enhanced level of consumer protection. This proposal accompanies other regulatory initiatives in the insurance sector, all of them pursuing three main objectives: firstly, a strengthened insurance supervision with convergent supervisory standards at EU level; secondly, a better risk management of insurance companies; and thirdly a greater protection of policyholders. All these initiatives contribute to the EU programme on consumer protection and herald a new approach to EU insurance regulation and supervision. However, while the new supervisory rules are a direct response to the financial crisis and shortcomings of crossborder cooperation between national supervisors, the plans for the revision of insurance mediation rules were conceived much earlier due to scandals with mis-selling of insurance products in the United States and some EU Member States. This article will focus entirely on the Commission’s initiative in the consumer mediation area and the aspects of insurance supervision and risk management will be dealt with in separate articles.

The Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership: Challenges and Opportunities for Consumer Protection. Paper No. 11 in the CEPS-CTR project ‘TTIP in the Balance’ and CEPS Special Report No. 115/July 2015

This paper examines options for regulatory cooperation in the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) and assesses the challenges and opportunities posed by regulatory cooperation for consumer protection. It looks at existing approaches to regulatory cooperation by referencing a range of case studies. Based on established practice and on the European Commission’s recently published proposal on regulatory cooperation, we discuss a possible approach that could be adopted in the TTIP. Against the significant potential gains from improved regulatory cooperation, one must set the significant challenges of reconciling the different regulatory philosophies of the US and the EU as well as some differences in their respective approaches to cooperation. In broad terms, this analysis finds that regulatory powers on both sides of the Atlantic will not be significantly affected by the TTIP, but suggests that European and American legislators will need to ensure that their priorities shape the TTIP regulatory cooperation agenda and not the other way around.