The Index Industry Association (IIA) supports the objective of encouraging retail investment and believes this will bring significant benefits to both retail investors and the European capital markets. To this end, we welcome the adoption of a Retail Investment Strategy that allows European retail investors to benefit from lower costs and better access to investment products.

The IIA would however like to highlight parts of the European Parliament’s recently published Retail Investment Strategy draft report as being counter to those aims, particularly as they relate to amendments 8, 19, 20, and 33 (see Annex I). The proposed amendments would create a new regulatory and supervisory regime for wholesale market data in the EU with very detailed and prescriptive requirements. The creation of a new regulatory and supervisory regime stands in direct opposition to initiatives aimed at boosting European Union competitiveness and reduced administrative burden, such as the recently proposed review of the Benchmark Regulation by the European Commission.

Read our response here.