The French Financial Markets Authority has published the 2025 annual report of its Joint Unit with France's Prudential Supervision and Resolution Authority, outlining joint consumer protection work across banking, insurance and financial services. The report shows a continued focus on fraud and misleading promotions, alongside thematic work on the French structured products market and on how firms collect and use investors' sustainability preferences. In 2025, the two authorities added more than 1,300 new website or entity names to their blacklists of unauthorized actors and reviewed more than 4,500 advertisements across traditional and digital media, more than double the 2024 volume, with particular attention to influencer promotion of financial and banking products. Based on supervisory findings, the Joint Unit also carried out a five-year retrospective review of firms' sales practices under rules on financial instruments, insurance distribution and information on packaged products, with publication due before the end of the year. Its structured products work found that fees can be difficult for investors to understand and vary significantly across distributors, and identified both good practices and cases of non-compliance, notably in target market setting. Separate work on sustainability preferences led to practical proposals for firms, including adapted assessment tools, better questioning practices and clearer articulation of regulatory obligations. Next steps include tailored supervisory and control actions within each authority's remit on structured products, publication of the five-year review of sales practices before year-end, and support for implementation of the European Union retail investment strategy. Under that updated framework, firms will need to identify and quantify product costs, assess whether they are justified and proportionate under value for money requirements, and provide more accessible standardized information on costs, risks and returns.

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