Simplify, don't complicate

Avanza and Nordnet, which have stopped their clients from acquiring BDCs citing the PRIIP rules as a reason, have upset many Swedish investors, who are now abandoning both Avanza and Nordnet in favor of Nordea, which has not yet stopped these companies.

The PRIIP Regulation is a European regulation that aims to protect investors by requiring detailed information documents to be provided for certain investment products. These documents, known as KIDs (Key Information Documents), provide a standardized summary of the product's characteristics and risks, facilitating comparison and understanding for investors. The documents must be provided in the local language, in our case Swedish.

According to Avanza, BDCs are currently not compatible with PRIIP regulations due to differences in regulatory requirements and documentation standards between the US and the EU. The fact that neither Avanza nor Nordnet can provide such a fact sheet in Swedish, despite all the user-friendly and easily accessible AIs available, makes me believe that the EU wants some kind of information that the American BDCs do not have to provide in their fact sheets according to the domestic regulations. For Swedish online banks and stockbrokers to compile this information in their fact sheets, it becomes financially unsustainable and the product is instead removed from the assortment. In this way, Europe may have reduced the flight of European money to America.

Instead, Europe & the EU should reduce their focus on refugee flows, energy crises, wars etcetera and shift that part of their focus to future visions such as America or China to prevent white flight and loss of skills. Gone are the days when a strong brand meant you would be a humanitarian superpower, now is the time to pay for the party.

For this, Europe needs to shift its focus to its own citizens to prevent their willingness to pay taxes to wane completely, because then the really big problems for Europe begin.

AI generated image with Grok