European directive framing insurance selling whatever the channel, imposing advice duties, remuneration transparency and product oversight.
The Insurance Distribution Directive widened the scope of the earlier intermediation rules: it no longer targets intermediaries alone but anyone who distributes, including the insurer selling direct, the comparison site and the ancillary distributor. Four obligations form its backbone. The distributor must act honestly, fairly and professionally, in the best interests of the customer, a formulation that shifts the burden of proof onto the professional. It must gather the customer's demands and needs and propose only a contract consistent with them, which is the duty to advise. It must disclose the nature of its remuneration, fee, commission or otherwise, and flag any conflict of interest. And the product manufacturer must define the target market, test it and monitor it, an obligation known as product oversight and governance that reaches upstream of the sale. To these are added a minimum of annual continuing training and, for insurance-based investment products, a reinforced diligence regime.
Directive (EU) 2016/97 of January 20, 2016, applicable since October 1, 2018 after a ten-month delay. It requires fifteen hours of continuing professional training a year from anyone involved in distribution, an obligation that reached several hundred thousand people across the Union and created a training market where none existed.
DDA, IDD, directive DDA, Insurance Distribution Directive, directive (UE) 2016/97