EFFAS sees limited progress for the Savings and Investment Union Request for efficient execution and strong political support
02 July 2025 | Frankfurt am Main
EFFAS is a very strong advocate of the Savings and Investment Union (SIU), the former Capital Markets Union (CMU) and a strong believer in the SIU’s huge potential for financing Europe’s future. The recent “Omnibus Package” has been a step into the right direction. However, during the EFFAS 2025 Summer School in Vienna the EFFAS Capital Markets Commission addressed several shortcomings of the Savings and Investment Union (SIU).
“Since its inception in September 2015, the Capital Markets Union experienced very little progress. Meanwhile, the narrative has changed and in summer 2025, the CMU was rebranded to Savings and Investment Union – but progress is likely to remain sluggish”, explains Prof. Dr. Leef H. Dierks, who teaches Finance and International Capital Markets at Lübeck University of Applied Sciences and is member of the EFFAS Capital Markets Commission.
The SIU lacks focused capital markets projects which will be executed at high speed and with a strong political support was one of the key findings of a capital markets panel during the conference.
“A low hanging fruit for the SIU are the badly needed regulatory changes for the issue of asset backed securities. After the GFC in 2008, the US markets for ABS strongly recovered and grew fourfoldedly. The European ABS markets, in contrast, decreased substantially and so far, failed to meaningfully recover. The capital requirements for banks and insurers have been increased disproportionately against a very clear empirical evidence of the stable performance of European securitisations over the past 30 years. This needs to be undone, alongside with obvious revisions of a regulatory framework which is overly burdensome”, says Jan-Peter Huelbert, Head of True Sale International GmbH, during the EFFAS conference.
“The European Single Access Point (ESAP) is another EU project which is lacking speed and focus”, explains Thorsten Müller, EFFAS board member in charge of capital markets. “The ESAP will be the basis for a common data pool across Europe. It will collect financial as well as ESG data and will be assessable by every single EU citizen. However, without an IT interface ensuring that the data input from listed corporates of 27 EU countries matches same quality standards the ESAP will fail. The United States has had an operational system, EDGAR, in place since 1996. Consequently, ESAP could significantly empower the SIU to allocate capital more efficiently by leveraging digital and high-quality data sets”, according to Rocchino Contangelo, Head of Buy-Side Research at Swisscanto and member of the EFFAS Capital Markets Commission.
EFFAS further demands an urgent adjustment of the Solvency II regulation. During the conference it was highlighted that within the last 20 years the investment equity ratio of life insurance companies plummeted from more than 20% to less than 5%. This can be attributed to an excessively restrictive regulation. As life insurers’ liabilities typically have a long duration, they are investments.
“If we properly address key drivers of the Savings and Investment Union and execute them efficiently with strong political support, we will substantially improve Europe’s capital market structure and its international
About EFFAS
EFFAS is a Not-for-profit organisation set up in 1962 with 14 national member associations in Europe, representing more than 18,000 Financial analysts, Asset managers, pension fund managers, corporate finance specialists, risk managers, treasurers among many other professional profiles from the investment profession. EFFAS is a certification body for finance with over 27,000 certificate holders worldwide.
For further information, please contact:
Muriel Balda | International Relations Manager
E-mail: m.balda@effas.com Phone Number: +49 69 98959519
