The European Parliament and the Council have left the financial sector no time to make major changes to its strategy for advising and marketing investment and insurance products. The EU institutions have agreed earlier than expected on a review of retail investment rules(RIS), attacking the way in which banks and other distributors charge commissions. The two European institutions have reached an agreement on a review of the retail investment strategy, RIS, the acronym that had been terrorizing the financial industry for the past two years, triggering a multitude of consultancy contracts to analyze the strategy and potential changes. This agreement was expected at a later date. Now, it must be ratified separately by the Parliament and the Council for the new rules to come into force. Although when RIS was launched it pointed to major changes, and some were softened, there have remained others that banks took for granted would end up disappearing due to discrepancies between commissioners in the European Commission and between countries. But, finally, the differences have been bridged to bring forward a text that points to two major measures that will lead banks, insurers, private banks and other distributors of investment and insurance products to take measures: value for money, which requires a review of commissions in the industry to justify what is charged, and a new bite at the ability of entities to charge retrocessions, which are the part of the commission of the products that the distributor keeps. Here, too, a value-add, such as advice, will have to be justified in order to charge retrocessions. "The impacts for institutions are very significant, since, in addition to the implementation of processes and methodologies for comparison, it is not out of the question that product costs will have to be adjusted if they do not reach a certain profitability," explains Matie Álvarez, senior associate at FinReg360. In essence, value for money will force asset managers to justify the volume of costs (commission and expenses borne by investors) with an internal comparison of similar products in the industry. In the case of insurance, the comparison will be against benchmarks to be developed by the European Insurance and Pension Authority (EIOPA). Details on the implementation of these indexes are still pending, but the agreement opens the door to the establishment of national benchmarks during the first four years. In a second stage, they will be European. "The value for money measures that have been published are very much in line with the proposals that have been discussed in recent months and imply that institutions will have to justify that the cost of their products is reasonable and appropriate," argues Alvarez. As for retrocessions, it has been agreed to introduce an incentive test aimed at ensuring that institutions guarantee that customers receive a quantifiable and tangible benefit if these third-party incentives exist. The small print of this test is missing, but it is a relevant novelty to force banks to justify value-added retrocessions. Experts suggest that it will be through advice. The funds and insurance business is becoming increasingly important for banks, as it represents a growing volume of fee income. The fund and insurance business is becoming increasingly important for banks, as it represents a growing volume of fee income, which is weighing more and more heavily on the income statement. The regulatory changes of MiFID II a decade ago and, now, RIS, have forced banks to make changes. Mainly, banks have opted for discretionary portfolio management, whereby the client delegates management in exchange for an explicit commission and the bank creates a portfolio of funds by risk profile that it manages. Banks manage more than 350,000 million in funds from their own fund managers in Spain, to which must be added the marketing of third-party products through advisory services, RTO (the investor buys without advice) or discretionary management portfolios. Between January and November 2025, according to data from the management company Inverco, banks have raised more than 20,000 million net for their funds. In private banking, Spanish institutions surpassed 900 billion in June, and in discretionary management portfolios for different asset profiles, they exceeded 320 billion. "As Europeans invest primarily on the basis of advice, we are focused on preventing abuse and keeping advice accessible, both financially and geographically. Supervisors will have stronger tools to analyze how products are priced, how advice is given and whether consumers really get value for money," said French MEP Stéphanie Yon-Courtin. The European Parliament and the Council have left the financial sector no time to make major changes to its strategy for advising and marketing investment and insurance products. The EU institutions have agreed earlier than expected to overhaul retail investment rules(RIS), attacking the way banks and other distributors charge commissions.