The European Parliament rejects the core of the Retail Investment Strategy

In the last edition I wrote that I was waiting for the Digital Fairness Act. It came on 11 November. A day later, the European Parliament voted down the core of the Retail Investment Strategy.

This edition in short:

• The European Parliament rejected the core of the Retail Investment Strategy. Today’s IDD rules stay in place for now.
• The European Commission proposed the Digital Fairness Act. It applies to all sectors, finance and insurance included.
• The Digital Fairness Act’s rules for AI agents that conclude contracts for consumers do not apply to financial services.
• The full blacklist of 62 practices that would be unfair in all circumstances, word for word from the proposal.
• The Commission plans to withdraw the Financial Data Access Regulation (FiDA), the EU’s open finance proposal.
• Anthropic launched Personal Finance in Claude in the US: read-only bank data through Plaid, no ads and no advice.
• EIOPA staff set out how supervisors can use behavioural insights in conduct of business supervision.
• The UK’s four digital regulators say existing rules already apply to personal AI agents.
• My AI library now has 77 supervisory publications on AI in finance.

The European Parliament rejects the core of the Retail Investment Strategy

On 12 November 2026 the European Parliament voted down the Omnibus Directive, the main part of the Retail Investment Strategy, by 300 votes to 286. It carried most of the reforms, including value for money rules and changes to inducements, and would have amended MiFID II, the IDD, Solvency II, UCITS and AIFMD. The PRIIPs regulation on the key information document was adopted.

For insurers and distributors, today’s IDD rules stay in place for now. What happens to the directive is open.

Read the full post.

The Commission proposes the Digital Fairness Act

On 11 November 2026 the European Commission published its proposal for the Digital Fairness Act. It would be a regulation that replaces the Unfair Commercial Practices Directive and applies directly in every member state. Banks and insurers are covered in full; the exceptions mainly concern investment services.

Besides a blacklist of unfair practices, the proposal has rules on:

1. Dark patterns: a general ban on online interfaces that deceive or manipulate consumers.
2. Influencer marketing: clear labels such as “advertisement”, and brands that use influencers must make sure the rules are followed.
3. Personalisation: limits on targeted advertising to minors or based on sensitive data, and on personalised prices that harm minors or vulnerable consumers.
4. Subscriptions and contracts: consent before a free trial turns into a paid contract, reminders before automatic renewal, a “terminate the contract here” button, an online withdrawal function and the right to reach a human in customer service when other means do not work.
5. AI agents: rules for automated systems that conclude contracts on behalf of consumers. They do not apply to financial services.
6. Enforcement: the Commission could act directly in large cross-border cases and impose fines of up to 6% of worldwide turnover.

Many of the practices are already banned today, and in financial services even more is covered already: the Consumer Rights Directive requires express consent for any extra payment, and sector rules such as the Insurance Distribution Directive and MiFID II require marketing to be fair, clear and not misleading.

Annex I lists 62 practices that would be unfair in every case, without anyone having to show that they distorted a consumer’s decision. I first published the list on 9 November from a draft that was circulating; the official proposal has the same 62 practices, word for word. The new points are about prices (drip pricing, fake reference prices, “limited time” offers without a duration), dropshipping and ten dark patterns. My post has the whole list.

Read my overview and the full blacklist.

The Commission plans to withdraw FiDA

On 4 November 2026 the European Commission listed the Financial Data Access Regulation (FiDA) among the 18 proposals it intends to withdraw, in its 2027 work programme. Its reason: three years with the co-legislators, no trilogues since June 2025 and no prospect of support in the Council.

The withdrawal is not final yet: the Parliament and the Council can now give their views. My post explains what FiDA would have built, from permission dashboards to data sharing schemes, where the negotiations got stuck and what happens next. I put a lot of time and hope into open finance and open insurance, so this one is personal.

Read why FiDA is being withdrawn.

Anthropic adds Personal Finance to Claude

On 5 November 2026 Anthropic introduced Personal Finance in Claude, a US beta that lets users connect their bank and card accounts through Plaid and ask questions about their own money. Access is read-only, there are no ads, and Anthropic says it is not designed to give investment advice.

Insurers are not among the institutions Plaid connects, but insurance still shows up in the transactions: the provider, the premium and how often it is paid. When a customer asks “where can I save money?”, the answer may well be their car or home insurance, with neither the insurer nor the intermediary in the conversation. My post also looks at where an explanation starts to look like a regulated recommendation, and why the same service would be harder to build in the EU, a week after FiDA.

Read my summary of Personal Finance in Claude.

EIOPA staff paper: behavioural insights in conduct of business supervision

On 27 October 2026 EIOPA published a staff paper, Putting behavioural insights into practice: four building blocks for conduct of business supervision. The four blocks are defining and assessing consumer outcomes, understanding how consumers behave in practice, considering interventions at different levels, and combining methods of gathering evidence.

The paper does not mention the Digital Fairness Act. Read it next to the proposal, though, and the links are hard to miss:

1. Formal compliance does not guarantee good consumer outcomes.
2. The choice environment shapes decisions as much as consumers’ own preferences.
3. Disclosure and light nudges on their own fix little.

That is essentially the logic of the Digital Fairness Act, applied to insurance. One of the paper’s cases, credit protection insurance sold through banks, reads like a dark patterns story: insurance packaged into a loan journey, where people treat it as a hurdle and rarely shop around.

The natural next step is to apply the same lens to digital sales journeys. Online forms, defaults, add-ons and cancellation flows are where many of these choices now happen, and exactly where the Digital Fairness Act is heading.

Read the EIOPA staff paper.