Joint ESAs Consumer Protection Day 2015 Programme

​​Panel Discussion: Conduct Risk

Developments in the banking, insurance and investment markets in recent years have shown that failures in the conduct of financial institutions can cause significant consumer detriment. Detriment arises to consumers either directly (i.e. the interaction between the financial institutions and the consumer, such as through mis-selling) or indirectly (i.e. through market-wide conduct failure, such as the manipulation of benchmark rates that lead to consumers being charged excessive prices). Additional impacts can occur via tax avoidance and money laundering.

Conduct failings lead to detriment for individual consumers. If the conduct failure results in reputational damage, compensation pay-outs, fines, or litigation it can directly impact firms. And if the failure is widespread in a particular market, it can undermine consumer confidence in the product/firm and may thus have more systemic impacts. There is also a growing realization in the industry itself of the impact that conduct risks can have for individual companies and for markets as a whole. This underlines the crucial importance of tackling ‘conduct risk’ wherever and however it arises, in the interest of consumers and the industry. 

Interview: The next decade in banking, insurance & pensions, securities and the ESA priorities 

The interview will offer an opportunity to set out wide-ranging (out of the box) ideas on the future agenda: what the challenges might look like; how supervision and regulation should react; what’s next as the ESAs mature.  Questions will include: 

• The so-called ‘growth agenda’ dominates in Brussels. This includes further mobilising capital markets to fund growth, including the Capital Markets Union in the making – some might say, to encourage risk taking.  What impact might this have for consumers, whose savings are at stake? 
  
• How to get ‘ahead of the game’ – intervening early, proactive rather than reactive supervision/regulation.
  
• Lessons learned from the crisis: ‘smarter regulation’, new regulatory tools. 
  
• Is the single market complete? What more needs to be done? This should focus on the role of the ESAs (supervisory convergence, how they use their tools)
  

Anneli Tuominen, Director General, Finnish Financial Supervisory Authority, and Chair, Consumer Protection Sub-Committee of the Joint Committee

Molly Scott Cato, Member of the European Parliament

Interviewer: Hermann-Josef Tenhagen, Managing Director and Editor in Chief, Finanztip.de, Germany

​​​Panel Discussion: The growing digitalisation of financial services – can regulation keep pace?