The right to a basic bank account across Europe has been a hot topic in the European Parliament. A lot of people, especially in the Central and Eastern European countries do not have access to a basic payment account. Several EU institutions now intend to do something about this.

Last week, the Parliament urged the Commission to take action and put forward a proposal for a directive. The Parliament also voted in support of a number of amendments suggested by NFU. They include texts saying that staff serving these customer groups must be adequately trained, and that it must be ensured that potential conflicts of interest do not affect these customers in a negative way.

NFU is content that training of employees has once again been supported. It is a general tendency in a number of directives currently being voted in the Parliament that training of finance employees is strongly supported by both sides in the Parliament.

Conflicts of interests are also an important issue, and NFU is particularly concerned about the impact of excessive use of sales targets. Sales targets have unfortunately not been explicitly mentioned in this context. However, they are addressed in a number of other contexts, namely the MiFID and the directive on responsible mortgage lending (CARRP). Read more about CARRP here.