Innovazione finanziaria e rafforzamento del mercato unico per servizi finanziari retail: sfide, rischi, risposte della regolazione.

The paper addresses the issue of financial innovation and its possible impact on the EU single market for retail financial services. Financial innovation is framed as an articulated trend which actually entails a number of new players, services and products with a potential to transform the interactions between clients and financial intermediaries, as well as to reshape the boundaries of regulated activities and the concept of “authorized firms”. Three examples of such trends are presented and discussed, including automated financial tools, comparison websites and peer-to-peer lending platforms. Innovative financial products and services raise concern both for policymakers and regulators, especially in the light of the ongoing recovery of the financial system and the successful but demanding efforts aimed at fostering banks’ resilience. Increased embedding of advanced technologies in an attempt to enhance user-friendliness, comparability and transparency of banking, financial and insurance services while reducing costs for users, challenge the ways in which regulation is framed; these phenomena raise questions on the ongoing suitability of the traditional paradigm of supervision and regulation. In this context, the consequences of a further integration of retail financial services markets in the EU are also discussed. This brings to question how the role of national supervisory authorities as well as European ones will potentially evolve over time, and whether a need for a partial reconsideration of the distribution of tasks, responsibilities and forms of interaction with other relevant public and private stakeholders is emerging.