The Romanian Research Society for Public and Private Affairs (SOROCAPP) was, together with ACAMA and ISF, the main organiser of the European Financial Services Conference. We spoke with lawyer Raul Felix Hodoș, the president of the association, about the legislative challenges in the Romanian financial market.

Reporter:

SOROCAPP is a partner of the European Financial Services Conference, 3rd edition, why is it necessary to organize such events? I particularly liked the attention you paid to financial education, a concept that we talk about quite a lot in Romania, but somewhat niched, everyone is doing his part. However, from what I have gathered, there are steps to include financial education in the school curriculum.

ATTORNEY DR. RAUL FELIX HODOȘ:

The Romanian Research Society for Public and Private Affairs – SOROCAPP – has already been organising conferences for 15 years. Because this is one of our objectives, we have partnered with the Institute for Financial Studies and ACAMA to organise this conference. More and more people already know about it and put it on their agenda for every March. Why financial education? Because it’s an essential component on the public business side as well as the private business side, because from the time we are 3-4 years old and go out to buy our first candy, we basically have to be financially educated. As we grow up we should know how to invest our money, how to protect it, how to use it, how to spend it ultimately and all of that subsumes the idea of financial education.

Reporter:

How volatile is the legislation in this area of financial services?

ATTORNEY DR. RAUL FELIX HODOȘ:

Since there is a lot of money involved, obviously the law changes quite often, especially recently there have been several directives and regulations with direct implications in the European financial market and obviously in the Romanian one. Here I would mention the European Insurance Distribution Directive (IDD) and the Markets in Financial Instruments Directive (MiFID II) – Directive 2014/65/EU of the European Parliament and of the Council of the European Union of 15 May 2014 on markets in financial instruments, which have been transposed or are in the process of being transposed into primary legislation – which is the main competence of the Romanian Parliament or the Government, as well as into secondary legislation in Romania, which is the competence of the Financial Supervisory Authority.

Reporter:

What is the impact of GDPR regulations on the financial market?

ATTORNEY DR. RAUL FELIX HODOȘ:

There are a lot of data, first of all it changes the whole idea of marketing in the industry. After that, for example in insurance, we have the discussions, which are not yet finalised, on who is the main operator, whether the insurer or the broker is the main operator, as long as the client goes to the broker, the broker is the one who requests the quotes from the insurer and, in the end, the policy is concluded with the insurer.

We will discuss all these issues, we will not find a final answer, but we are taking another step to find out how we can apply the regulation in the financial industry in such a way that we also respect the rigours of the law, but also have as little negative impact as possible. The regulation means more care for the rights of data subjects, on the one hand, and on the other hand, there are more obligations on businesses to implement, and these obligations obviously translate into money because any new obligation that has to be implemented generates expenses. There are obligations, for example, on market players to make certain reports, on money laundering, on tax evasion.

We will have to see how we apply it internally, of course, once we see how the Court of Justice of the European Union interprets it, the interpretations it gives are binding, we also have European bodies that give us certain recommendations and these recommendations are soft law, semi-binding.