ROMA – 56.8% of appeals accepted, compensation of 13.1 million euros awarded, with an average of almost 35 thousand euros per capita: these are the main data for 2023 in the annual report of the Arbitrator for financial disputes established at Consob. Adding this year’s compensation with those approved since 2017, the year the ACF was established, we arrive at 156 million euros.
Economic gender gap. The other side of vulnerability
by Raffaele Ricciardi
Those who turn to the arbitrator, we read in the report, are predominantly men (confirming other data and analyzes which demonstrate that in Italy they are mainly the ones who deal with financial matters), aged between 45 and 74, a modest level of education and poor knowledge in the financial field. Furthermore, these are almost always people with a low propensity for risk, and who feel at the mercy of the financial advisor, to whom they attribute the losses suffered. The relationship with investment consultants – reduced transparency, failure to assess the adequacy of the risk profile – was the cause of the appeal in approximately half of the cases. Deficiencies often recognized by the referee.
The ACF’s decisions are not mandatory for banks or other financial intermediaries who are ordered to compensate the customer, and yet even in 2023 the percentage of voluntary enforcement was almost total: 95.5%. The only sanction available to the ACF is the reputational one: it reports on its website intermediaries who do not comply, but the intermediary itself must also report this on its website.
In 2023, the region from which the greatest number of appeals came was Lombardy, with 15.5%, followed by Puglia and Emilia Romagna. Almost half of the appeals come from Northern Italy (46.1%). The majority prefer to be assisted by an attorney (60.7%), but there is a sharp decline in the reporting of cases by consumer associations, which were much more frequent in the period in which the banking crises exploded. The ACF, underlines the report, is becoming «a tool for resolving disputes which, “physiologically”, can arise within the relationship between customer and intermediary and, not only, a tool for managing the prejudicial consequences suffered by savers following of the serious banking crises of a few years ago”. This is demonstrated by the decreasing number of appeals presented in 2023: 983, approximately half of the historical peaks of over 1800 recorded in 2017 and 2018. There were 86 intermediaries involved in the ACF proceedings, mainly banks that also provide services of investment: 67. The remainder are Sgr, Sim and other EU management companies. Since 2017, 238 financial intermediaries have been the subject of at least one appeal to the Arbitrator
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– 2024-03-31 17:54:13
