Retail Investment Strategy: final adoption expected

The Retail Investment Strategy is an EU package of two laws on how investment products are designed, advised on and sold to retail investors, meaning private individuals rather than professional investors. It targets costs, conflicts of interest in advice and the information investors receive (European Parliament press release (external site)).

The package is still a proposal. Council and Parliament reached a provisional agreement on 18 December 2025, and formal adoption by both is pending (Council policy page (external site)).

Value for money: firms identify and quantify all costs and charges of the products they advise, and judge whether total costs are justified and proportionate. Products are compared with peer groups of similar products, and supervisory benchmarks serve as a reference for national supervisors (European Parliament press release (external site)). As an example, a fund charging 1.8 percent a year in a peer group charging around 0.9 percent would need a justification for the gap.

Inducements, payments from a product provider to the distributor, face a new test: they are allowed where they improve the service to the client and conflicts of interest are mitigated (European Parliament press release (external site)).

Suitability is assessed with proportionate and necessary information about the client, including knowledge and experience, financial situation, capacity to bear losses and risk tolerance. Disclosure to consumers becomes digital by default (European Parliament press release (external site)).

The key information document for packaged retail and insurance-based investment products (PRIIPs) gets forward-looking performance scenarios based on realistic data and plausible assumptions (European Parliament press release (external site)).

The rules reach investment firms, banks and insurers that advise on or sell investment products, and asset managers that design funds under the UCITS Directive (undertakings for collective investment in transferable securities) and the Alternative Investment Fund Managers Directive (AIFMD) (European Parliament press release (external site)).

• Retail Banking Advisor: presents quantified costs and gathers the client information the suitability assessment uses.
• Paraplanner / Financial Planning Analyst: builds suitability reports on the new advice and cost rules.
• Private Banking Analyst: applies the inducement test and the cost figures to advice on client portfolios.
• Compliance Officer: adds the inducement test and value for money checks to compliance monitoring.
• Investment Product Specialist: compares each product with its peer group on costs and performance.
• Fund Selection Analyst: uses peer group comparisons when shortlisting funds for distribution.

The Commission proposed the package on 24 May 2023. Parliament's committee approved the agreed text on 23 June 2026, and the procedure file lists 11 November 2026 as an indicative plenary date (Parliament procedure file 2023/0167(COD) (external site)).

The Commission's request to ESMA, the European Securities and Markets Authority, assumes publication in the Official Journal by January 2027 and most implementing rules applying from July 2029. ESMA's technical advice is due by 1 October 2027 (Commission call for advice to ESMA (external site)). Only the 1 October 2027 deadline is fixed; the other dates are expected.

The package has two parts: a regulation amending the PRIIPs rules, and an omnibus directive amending MiFID II (Markets in Financial Instruments Directive), the Insurance Distribution Directive (IDD), Solvency II, the UCITS Directive and the AIFMD (Council policy page (external site)).

Parliament confirmed the opening of negotiations on 23 April 2024 (Parliament procedure file (external site)), and the Council agreed its position on 12 June 2024 (Council press release, 12 June 2024 (external site)).