BETTER FINANCE (The European Federation of Investors and Financial Services Users) is a non-governmental international organisation advocating at EU level for the interests of all European citizens as financial services users. We conduct research and promote financial literacy, inform on Investments, Savings and Personal Finances. We act as an independent financial expertise center and towards policy-makers and stakeholders (including end-users, consumers, retail investors, and other actors who are independent from the financial industry). Similarly to the EU itself, our membership has constantly grown since our creation in 2009. Today we count over 40 independent and respected national and international member and affiliate organisations from most EU Member States and beyond. Since the creation of our organisation in 2009 our main objective has been to restore the confidence individual investors and other users of financial services in Capital Markets. In order to do so, we are focusing on four key priorities:
• Better protection of users of financial services including fair and clearly comparable information, unbiased and competent advice, elimination of tax discrimination against individual savers and investors and consistent rules for financial consumer protection.
• More transparency, liquidity, integrity and efficiency of capital markets in order to primarily serve the investors’ and issuers’ interests, before those of the financial institutions.
• More responsible and competitive lending with banks returning to their core business of collecting deposits and lending to the real economy, with real competition, and without using money from central banks, depositors and taxpayers to fund high margin but risky investment and trading activities.
• Better governance of financial supervision by the European Authorities in order to put an end to the imbalance of the representation of interests between players from the financial industry and the users of financial services and other stakeholders independent from the finance industry.
