EIOPA ASKS NATIONAL REGULATORS TO LOOK AT PPI

The European Insurance & Occupational Pensions Authority (EIOPA) has asked its country members' National Competent Authorities (NCAs) to analyze their national markets and on that basis decide whether any Payment Protection Insurance (PPI) sold within their jurisdiction merits (further) investigation. Those NCAs have been asked by EIOPA to provide feedback on their previous investigations. EIOPA acknowledged that properly designed and sold PPI products performed a useful purpose, but noted that in a number of countries there had been significant levels of misselling, which had been "to the detriment of consumers and negatively affecting the reputation of the insurance sector as a whole". EIOPA said that in a few countries some companies were developing a new generation of protection products, and warned that "these newer products could pose some of the same risks" unless particular care was taken to make sure that the product design flaws and misselling under PPI were not repeated.