Research areas

The European Credit Research Institute (ECRI) is a think-tank managed by CEPS and has its own board with its own strategy. At present, there are 13 full members in the board (ACCIS, ACI Worldwide, American Express, BNP Paribas, Cofidis, Crédit Agricole, ING, International Personal Finance, Mastercard, Provident Finance, Schufa and VISA Europe); in addition, ECRI has an associate members (The Association of Luxembourgian bankers). 

Retail financial services covered by ECRI

Due to the relative small size of the board, each of the 6 full members has a lot of power in deciding about the activities of ECRI. These activities all cover the retail financial services covered by ECRI:

  1. Mortgage credit;
  2. Consumer credit;
  3. Other types of credit (student loans, etc);
  4. Savings account;
  5. Current account;
  6. Payments.

Policy scope 

The policy scope of ECRI relates to the “banking activities scope” and includes (this is not an exhaustive list):

  1. All the European banking directives/regulations (in particular Mortgage Credit Directive, Consumer Credit Directive, data protection regulation, Payment Service Directive 2, Multi-Fee Interchange Regulation, etc);
  2. All the "non-banking" European directives/regulations which can affect the "banking activities scope" of ECRI (such as all the European regulations in relation to the digitalisation process of the economy, which can affect the development of FinTech: data protection, norms for algorithms, interoperability, etc);
  3. Macroeconomic policies (monetary policies, housing policies, etc);
  4. Taxation policies.

Activities of ECRI 

Regarding the activities of ECRI on which any new full member will have a power of decision, we have:

  1. Regular publications within the "banking activities scope" and "policy scope" of ECRI;
  2. Conferences and events bringing together senior practitioners, distinguished academics and high level officials with the aim of fostering the exchange of ideas on issues of common concern. For example, on 18 June 2018, ECRI organised a highly successful conference on "Protecting consumers taking credit in the digital era": this conference had 100 attendees and 20 senior speakers/panellists, including the Director General from DG JUST, the Director General of BEUC the European Consumer Protection Organisation and representatives of important credit service organisations. More information about ECRI events can be found here; 
  3. Task Forces on a specific topic defined and decided by the board members; the objective of each of these Task Forces is to draft a report with key recommendations based on the consensus made with the different members of the Task Force during the related meetings (for example, the last completed Task Force was on "Cybersecurity in Finance: Getting the policy mix right!"); this type of approach is unique in Brussels and has proved to be successful to influence the European regulatory process. More information about ECRI Task Forces can be found here;
  4. The production of statistics which are used by numerous organisations including international regulators (please see here); this package costs 600 euros but are for free of charge for ECRI Members);
  5. Networking and visibility on the Brussels stage (notably via the ECRI website and the publications of regular Newsletters). 
  6. Projects with the European regulators and the industry where Board Full members can give their views (for example, we are currently working on a project with a prestigious financial services corporation to analyze the impact of new EU legislation on the card payments sector).

Please feel free to directly contact ECRI to discuss any membership schemes (via phone: +32 (0)2 229 39 87 or email ecri@ceps.eu). For more information about membership.

The brochure of ECRI can be downloaded here.