EU News - Sectoral inquiry into the financial services sector
The Commission has announced an investigation into competition in the financial services sector. The inquiry will particularly focus on the retail banking and the business insurance market. The results of the probe may lead to investigations being opened against individual companies.
The Commission has announced an investigation into competition in the financial services sector. The inquiry will particularly focus on the retail banking and the business insurance market. The results of the probe may lead to investigations being opened against individual companies.
The inquiry into retail banking will investigate the following:
Conditions for market entry and for the supply of retail products and services, including conditions for both cross border supply of services and the establishment of commercial presence in markets other than in the service provider's home market. This part of the inquiry will examine indications of the existence of possible anti-competitive agreements or practices of domestic banks, or activities by associations or networks of banks that could, for instance, lead to the imposition of higher entry costs or limit access to networks.
Conditions of competition in selected networks or joint infrastructures for retail products. A particular focus will be payment systems. The investigation will include, among other things, collection of data on access to payment systems and on price differences between different systems to see whether price competition is muted.
Degree of effective choice for consumers and SMEs.
The inquiry into business insurance will examine the provision of insurance products and services to businesses including relevant reinsurance aspects. It will particularly focus on:
- Conditions for entry (e.g. access to risk data, access to statistics, access to distribution channels, existing regulation, market structure);
- The existence of possible vertical agreements between brokers or other insurance and reinsurance intermediaries and insurers;
- The role of insurers. associations, coinsurance arrangements and other horizontal agreements, involving insurance and reinsurance market participants;
- The scope of pool agreements;
- Agreements on, and use of, standard policy clauses;
- Sharing of risk-relevant data (access to databases).
Where necessary the Commission can require companies or trade associations to supply information, documents or statements to enable it to gather data and undertake the investigation. As a first step, detailed questionnaires are being sent to consumer associations, banks, insurance companies and their trade associations. The forms will have to be returned after the summer. The Commission will then present the preliminary findings of the investigation and give stakeholders an opportunity to submit comments.
If the inquiry confirms the existence of anticompetitive agreements or practices or abuses of a dominant position, the Commission can be expected to initiate focused investigations against individual companies. This is what happened in earlier sectoral inquiries, such as the inquiry into excessive mobile phone roaming fees that led to investigations into Vodafone, Deutsche Telekom and O2.
