The EBA’s recent mystery shopping exercise into personal loans and payment accounts shows that the conduct of some financial institutions „is inadequate and needs to improve”

37 financial institutions across the participating Member States were mystery shopped on 340 occasions, of which 250 were carried out on-site and 90 online.

The European Banking Authority (EBA) published a Report on its mystery shopping exercise into personal loans and payment accounts. „The exercise confirmed that mystery shopping is a tool that adds immense value to the supervision of national competent authorities and is complementary to other more conventional tools or approaches.” according to the press release.

„It delivers first-hand information about, and insight into, the conduct of financial Institutions towards consumers visiting a branch or using a digital channel.” EBA says.

For example, within the small sample of financial institutions covered by the mystery shopping exercise, the EBA found that the conduct of some of them is inadequate and needs to improve.  „Some financial institutions, for instance, did not provide the required pre-contractual information to consumers, and automatically increased the total amount of the credit to include the bank fees without collecting consumer’s explicit consent.” EBA explains.

The EBA has coordinated the mystery shopping exercise in 2023 involving five national competent authorities, which took part as direct participants or observers. The mystery shopping exercise focused on the pre-contractual phase of obtaining personal loans and, in some jurisdictions, also payment accounts, including those with basic features. In order to account for divergent national circumstances, such as provisions in national law and national supervisory priorities, some details of the mystery shopping exercise varied between participating Member States.