EU Commission publishes consumer financial services action plan

The EU Commission has published a consumer financial services action plan. The plan is intended to deepen the single market by enhancing competition and enabling firms and consumers to obtain financial services, regardless of whether providers are domestic or from another Member State.

The action plan draws on the Commission's conclusions from its Green Paper on retail financial services, which was published in December 2015, and has been prepared as one of the Commission's commitments under the Capital Markets Union action plan.

The actions are grouped into three main strands:

• increasing consumer trust and empowering consumers, which includes proposals to make it easier to take car insurance 'no-claims bonuses' abroad, reduce fees for cross-border transactions involving non-Euro countries and more transparent pricing of car rental insurance;
• reducing legal and regulatory obstacles affecting businesses when seeking to expand abroad, which will include work on common creditworthiness assessment criteria and facilitating the exchange of data between credit registers; and
• supporting innovative technologies, including electronic identification and trust services and reviewing rules on selling financial services remotely, including by phone and online.