Lilia Belyaeva discussed the National Competition Development Plan and the Road Map for developing competition on the market of financial services

On 6 December 2016 at the VII Annual Competition “Insurance broker – the key link of the insurance market” organized by the Professional Insurance Brokers Association.

The attendees included representatives of the Bank of Russia, insurance companies and insurance brokers, association of financial organizations.

First of all, Lilia Belyaeva, Deputy Head of FAS Department for Control over Financial Markets, discussed a draft 2017-2018 National Competition Development Plan, devised by FAS. On 1 December the Plan was submitted to the Government of the Russian Federation for consideration.

The Plan’s principles and objectives on developing competition as one of the priorities in the national policy include decreasing state participation in market relations, ensuring equal conditions for economic activities and removing unreasonable barriers, and establishing responsibility of the authorities and local self-government bodies for pursuing competition development policy.

The representatives of the antimonopoly body also pointed out that similar principles are embedded in another document drafted by FAS — the Action Plan (“Road Map”) for developing competition on the market of financial services submitted to the Bank of Russia for approval.

In particular, some of the measures in the draft Road Map are “designed to reduce administrative barriers and expand the list of persons that can offer, for instance, civil liability insurance of developers to shared-equity construction participants, insurers offering compulsory third party motor liability insurance”.

Some the measures included in the draft Road Map are aimed at preventing competition restrictions and violations of the antimonopoly law by financial organizations, particularly, insurance companies. In such measures Lilia Belyaeva included changes to the law obligating financial organizations to approve in advance with FAS their constituent documents and the rules of professional activities

According to Lilia Belyaeva, such measures are put in the draft Road Map due to non-competitive practices of some associations with regard to membership in the management bodies in breach of the principles of the equal rights of all members of the association to be elected in the management bodies, when conditions are created only for large players to impact the circulation of financial services.

Deputy Head of FAS specialized Department emphasized measures towards increasing transparency of the work of financial organizations as an important contribution in developing competition on the market of financial services.

One of FAS proposals is to have a single web-portal (a “Reputational Portal”) to publish information about the established facts of the violations committed by financial organizations.

“Such a portal can reinforce incentives for financial organizations to take the necessary measures to observe the law of the Russian Federation in order to maintain demand for their services”, concluded Lilia Belyaeva.