Oireachtas Joint and Select Committees

Tuesday, 28 November 2017

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Finance, Public Expenditure and Reform, and Taoiseach

Scrutiny of EU Legislative Proposals

7:15 pm

Mr. Oliver Gilvarry:

There have been changes with regard to charges and such. They have been brought in at a European level, we have transposed them and they will come into effect on 3 January. Under the markets in financial instruments directive, MiFID 2, we have a situation where the information provided to a consumer has to be understood by the consumer. We will see changes coming through. As part of that process, the Central Bank has changed its consumer protection code to bring in this concept of what we call inducements. An issue seen across Europe is provision of services to people. It may not be the best product that is being provided because one is paying a higher commission. We are seeing greater disclosure. There is more disclosure by people about what inducements they are getting paid for selling the product. That is all looking forward to the future but there have been changes and we have also seen changes with regard to what one might call instruments from the legislation that has gone through the houses in recent times with relation to the Financial Services Ombudsman and the Pensions Ombudsman. There have been changes in addition to those Mr. Cross has highlighted with regard to PRIPs, which is supposed to give simple language to people that they can understand. It specifically says in the regulation that it must be in plain English in a very small number of pages.

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