The 4th and final Newsletter for EQAFIT project is here!.
The EQAFIT project comes to an end… After two years of committed work, the EQAFIT team held the last transnational meeting in Barcelona. Read more about the project below.
You can also find it in these languages: Swedish, Spanish, Italian & Romanian versions.
EQAFIT 4rd Newsletter by Marta Garcia
The last meeting of the EQAFIT project was held on 10 February to discuss the last outstanding ideas. The meeting followed the agenda and was very fruitful. Finally the day before the final meeting the consortium had the opportunity to attend the last final event held at the Delegation of the European Commission in Barcelona. The online tool is available in all national languages ! Visit the last news of the project here.
Financial education is a complex topic with numerous facets. In order to improve the quality of financial education as a whole, it is crucial to look at the whole sector – from general financial literacy up to VET in financial education. The EQAFIT project partners are therefore closely collaborating with the Financial Sustainable Literacy (SFinLit) project.
The aim of this project is to encourage the use of digital education technologies and methodologies in order to enable students to acquire the skills they need to improve their financial literacy, digital literacy and learn to Learn competences. Recently, the SFinLit project published the online training resources developed by the project partners, which can be found under the following link: https://www.sfinlit-project.eu/outputs
The EQAFIT and SFinLit projects mutually benefit from each other by sharing a common goal – a high quality financial education that benefits people of all ages and backgrounds.
EQAFIT suggests including awareness of the Regulation of investment
recommendations and the distinction between investment recommendations and financial
advice in any financial training, especially that carried out periodically for advisers as well as
that aimed at other educational levels, especially young people, and why not, also for the
population in general.
The National Securities Market Commission has announced through a statement about the
possible breaches that some influencers are incurring when issuing investment
recommendations through social networks.
As explained by the CNMV, it is likely that some experts mistakenly think that the fact of
transmitting their communications through social networks or verbally does not imply
compliance with the European Union regime on investment recommendations. In this sense,
the supervisory body will contact them preventively to request certain clarifications about
their professional activity.
The objective of this review is to require them to comply with the obligations established in
Regulation (EU) 596/2014 of the European Parliament and of the Council of April 16, 2014 on
market abuse and in the Delegated Regulation (EU) 2016 /958 that develops it. In particular,
the regulations establish that investment recommendations be clear, exact and objective and
that those who make them correctly identify themselves and disclose all relationships or
circumstances that may affect their objectivity, in addition to ensuring equal treatment with
supervised persons and entities that issue recommendations.
Regulation (EU) 596/2014 of the European Parliament and of the Council defines the
investment recommendation as “the information in which an investment strategy is
recommended or suggested, cleanly or implicitly, in relation to one or several financial
instruments or with issuers, including any opinion on the current or future value or price of
those instruments, intended for distribution channels or the public.” Among the channels of
dissemination are the media.
In this, the European Securities and Markets Authority (ESMA, for its acronym in English)
published a statement in the material sense of investment recommendations in social
networks in which it explained, among other issues, the type of activities subject to regulation,
the possibility of misleading investors and the corresponding regulations.
For purposes of determining the scope of investment recommendations, it is crucial to
distinguish it from financial advice.
In order to identify an investment recommendation, its content must be taken into account,
that is, if an investment strategy is recommended, such as buying, selling or holding financial
instruments, regardless of the name given to it and the way in which it is presented.
While investment recommendations include information of a generic and non-personalized
nature intended for specific distribution channels or the general public, financial advice is an
investment service intended to offer personalized recommendations, for which the financial
adviser must comply with its obligations to know your client by carrying out the suitability test
to adjust your recommendations to your investor profile and sustainability preferences.
Read more here (in Spanish): https://www.asesoresfinancierosefpa.es/regulacion-financiera-actual/redes-sociales-y-asesoramiento-financiero/
The European Quality Assurance Reference Framework for Vocational Education and Training
(EQAVET) is based on a cycle of quality assurance and improvement (i.e., Plan, Do, Check, Act), and a
selection of descriptors and indicators applicable to quality management, both at the level of the VET
system and at the level of the VET provider.
In order to be able to adapt to a labor market specific to a knowledge-based society,
professional training providers have to implement a quality assurance policy at their level.
EQAFIT aims to help VET financial training providers to establish and improve quality assurance
systems; with a particular focus on feedback loops between VET systems, as a prerequisite for the
continuous improvement of the training offer. In this sense, we developed an online service, to support the quality system, with a particular focus on the Act phase of the PCDA cycle.
The customized and easy-to-use online service integrates tools and guidelines developed in
previous and newly designed EU projects, and the graduate tracking system.
Stay tuned because soon we will share these results with you!
Learn more about EQAVET here: https://ec.europa.eu/social/main.jsp?catId=1536&langId=en
Taking advantage of the synergies of our financial sector, EFPA- Asociación Española de Asesores y Planificadores Financieros-Patrimoniales presented our ERASMUS+ KA2 project EQAFIT- Enhanced Quality Assurance in the Financial Training in the dissemination event of the ERASMUS+ KA2 project SFinLit- Sustainable finances Literacy, coordinated by the UNED – Universidad Nacional de Educación a Distancia (Spain) and organised by the IEF – Institut d’Estudis Financers in Barcelona (Avda. Josep Tarradellas 123, 2nd floor) and by streaming, on 9 June, aimed at professionals in the financial sector, teachers and students of secondary education and vocational training. General public.
EFPA took this opportunity to hold its first multiplier event, which was attended by 16 people. Different EU associations working with VET providers and banking associations participated in this event.
The agenda included the presentation of the objective of the project and the recent results of the project, the whole activity was led by Andrea Carreras who presented EFPA and the objective of its participation as a consortium and was followed by Imma Miralles, EFPA’s European project coordinator.
This first multiplier event was published on the EPALE platform, the EU platform for sharing and participating in the project. Coinciding with this event, EQAFIT was also presented at the European Skills Week 2022, a special event organized by the European Commission to celebrate best practices in Vocational Education and Training (VET), with events of local, regional and national organizations and other VET partners.
The 2nd Newsletter for EQAFIT project is here! See all the updates and the Results of the project here.
One more result for VET providers is here! We are excited to share the product of our fourth Activity: Tools & Guidelines for VET Providers!
In this report, you can easily find suggestions and recommendations on how to improve different aspects of their Quality Assurance systems. Specifically, you can find Tools & Guidelines for strengthening VET Providers performance and divided by indicators.
Download here the Tools & Guidelines for a closer look, and do not miss out on more updates: follow us on LinkedIn and subscribe to our Newsletter!
We’re back! And this time, we are excited to share the product of our third Activity: The Compendium of Good Practices!
Inside, you can find actions that foster a high-quality VET environment, with a particular focus on the review phase of the PDCA cycle and on feedback loops.
Specifically, practical examples from all over Europe illustrate various approaches to different aspects of the Quality Assurance system and the management cycle.
Download here the Compendium for a closer look, and do not miss out on more updates: follow us on LinkedIn and subscribe to our Newsletter!
