Better Finance

As home to investors and companies that prefer the allure of American markets over their domestic counterparts, the European Union has arrived at a crossroads. A window of opportunity has arrived for creating a new framework that supports efficient capital markets, creating growth and jobs and enabling retail investors and pension savers meet their long-term financial needs.

Fund firms face the prospect of EU rules setting standards of “value for money” for their investment products under the Retail Investment Strategy due to be unveiled on 24 May. This could include disincentives, for example, to charging active management fees for an investment that underperforms an index fund. For all the discussion of a ban on inducements for investment advice, the commission has decided to propose a more limited inducement ban on execution-only investments. 

As the European Union considers banning inducements (aka kickbacks) for investment advice as part of its forthcoming retail investment strategy, those who support inducements, like Luxembourg’s ALFI and the worldwide CFA Institute, but also strong critics of inducements, such as the EU’s commissioner for financial services Mairead McGuinness and EU investor and financial service users organisation Better Finance are making their widely divergent views known. 

The acronym ELTIF has been popping up on news sites with increasing regularity in recent months. This vehicle has failed to excite the industry since it was launched in 2015, but maybe this is changing.

Some predict technology will undermine the rationale behind the investment fund. Others see it driving greater sophistication, and a narrowing of the gap between the asset manager and the wealth manager. Yet the message is clear: although Luxembourg can congratulate itself on recording €5trn assets, it must be sufficiently agile to adapt.