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Do the banks’
sales strategies
sufficiently
take the
customer into
consideration?
The relationship between a customer
and a financial employee is based on
trust. If the employee does not want to
damage that relationship, he should
sufficiently take into consideration the
wishes of his customer. Moreover, the
Belgian customer is well protected by
all kinds of legislation.
It is not always easy to find a balance
between the interest of the customer
and the commercial goals of the finan-
cial institution. The trade unions, for
example, are of the opinion that finan-
cial institutions should not only mea-
sure the performance of their employ-
ees on the basis of sales figures.
When selling a product or service, a relation-
ship of trust between customer and financial
employee is central. Due to the fact that, in the
past few years, the customer database within
the financial institutions has clearly been
segmented, the financial advisors have also
specialised in a specific customer profile. The
quality of the advice to the customer benefit
from this.
Knowing what is suitable
for the customer
In Belgium and Europe, the investor is pro-
tected by various pieces of legislation. The
moratorium on the commercialisation of es-
pecially complicated financial products is an
example of this. The financial sector has vol-
untarily endorsed the moratorium , which
obliges it not to commercialise any structured
products that are defined as especially compli-
cated by the Financial Services and Markets
Authority (FSMA).
The MiFID Directive also aims for better
protection of the investor. MiFID provides
that a financial advisor should not sell invest-
ment products to a customer if they do not
match the customer’s investor profile. There
is no discussion about the objective of MiFID.
The question may arise, however, whether
the manner in which the investor profile is
drawn up does not leave too much room for
interpretation. Each financial institution, af-
ter all, can prepare the questionnaire freely
that determines in which profile a customer is
categorised.
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Ethical enterprise