Parliament wants Key Information Documents to help consumers with the nightmare of navigating the retail investment market, but can MEPs agree on the products to cover?

Clearing the fog over investment products

https://api.multimedia.europarl.europa.eu/documents/20125/16382124/n001-130917-001-enx.srt

Do you want to invest your savings  in insurance or investment products?

Here's the information  you'll receive from your bank:

Difficult to compare and often opaque,  financial products are in the hot seat.

to accompany these kinds of products  to facilitate understanding and comparison.

But MEPs are having a hard time agreeing  on which financial products to cover.

We are friends, even though we disagree.

We are friends, but I don't like that you  aren't going to support me on the scope

In this case I've always had the view that we  should have had a step-by-step approach:

start with the scope, roughly as  envisaged by the Commission,

and in future years,  look to extend the scope to other products

such as shares and bonds and some of the  other products that were talked about here.

Let's start off with the more  complex financial products,

prove the document's useful and, in future  years, extend it to other financial products.

The vision isn't shared  by the dossier's rapporteur.

If the most meaningful information is  focused on the most complex products,

there is a risk of producing  an adverse effect:

pushing small savers to invest  in the most complicated products

and attract the general public's savings.

This is the case for shares, bonds and  life insurance, to give just three examples.

MEPs won't settle the dossier  before November.