2 research outputs found
The Revision of the Insurance Mediation Rules at EU Level and its Impact on Consumer Protection
The European Commission has put forward a new proposal for a
directive on insurance mediation which should provide for significant
changes in practices of selling insurance products and guarantee
enhanced level of consumer protection. This proposal accompanies
other regulatory initiatives in the insurance sector, all of them pursuing
three main objectives: firstly, a strengthened insurance supervision with
convergent supervisory standards at EU level; secondly, a better risk
management of insurance companies; and thirdly a greater protection
of policyholders. All these initiatives contribute to the EU programme
on consumer protection and herald a new approach to EU insurance
regulation and supervision. However, while the new supervisory rules
are a direct response to the financial crisis and shortcomings of crossborder
cooperation between national supervisors, the plans for the
revision of insurance mediation rules were conceived much earlier
due to scandals with mis-selling of insurance products in the United
States and some EU Member States. This article will focus entirely on
the Commission’s initiative in the consumer mediation area and the
aspects of insurance supervision and risk management will be dealt
with in separate articles
Values in Crisis International (SUF edition)
Full edition for scientific use. The COVID-19 crisis is manifold and poses major health, economic and social challenges for current societies. Long-term monitoring of central values and attitudes of citizens in times of crises help to grasp current social and political tensions. Taking this ambition to the global scale and providing comparable data across nations is the main aim of the Values in Crisis Study (VIC). Christian Welzel, together with well-known researchers in Germany, UK and Sweden initiated the study and finally 18 countries collaborated in this project. Currently, the Values in Crisis (VIC) Survey is by our knowledge the only international longitudinal survey project on attitudes and values providing data on a global scale. The international dataset is available as a compact version including mainly the harmonized variables of education, income, and region, the key variables of the survey and scales referring to classical value concepts or personality factors. Additionally, there is a full version, where country-specific questions deviating from the standard questionnaire are available for further single country analysis. A method report is additionally published to provide more insights about the country-specific details of the surveys. This dataset represents the data of 18 countries of the first wave of this longitudinal study which is now made publicly available by the SSÖ-Team and AUSSDA. Further releases of the second wave of the survey “end at sight” which is conducted in 2021 and the third wave of the survey (“after the crisis”, probably in 2022) are planned in the future