Insurance Europe has today issued a paper outlining the reasons why changes proposed by the European Supervisory Authorities (ESAs) to the regulatory technical standards (RTS) of the Packaged Retail and Insurance-based Investment Products (PRIIPs) Regulation will not work or deliver benefits for consumers.

The reasons for which the proposed changes were rejected are:

• The rejected proposals included a confusing presentation of performance that mixes past and future performance and that is not comparable between different product types, particularly insurance-based products.
• The rejected proposals also introduced a new cost indicator which would make comparison between products or between two cost tables for a single product impossible.
• The proposed changes to the presentation of multi option products are over complicated and would not make it easier for consumers to understand, but also would have deteriorated the quality and understandability of the information.

The ESAs and the European Commission are currently considering whether to reintroduce proposed changes to the PRIIPS RTS that were rejected by the European Insurance and Occupational Pensions Authority's (EIOPA) board of supervisors in July, but this will be a disadvantage for the insurance companies, and also for the consumers of such products.

In this regard, rather than pursuing with these proposals, legislators must commit to a full level 1 review of the PRIIPS Regulation that addresses the underlying problems with the PRIIPs key information document as trying to have a quick fix of them would only undermine consumer understanding.