They call "mystery shopping”, but perhaps it would be better to rename it “undercover checks”. It works like this: an inspector of a supervisory authority pretends to be any customer and gets in touch with the companies to be checked, to make sure that the service offered keeps its promises and does not violate the rules. Luigi Federico Signorini, president of the Insurance Supervisory Institute, requests that Parliament change as soon as possible the law that allows this kind of controls in the insurance sector.
The regulatory intervention - Signorini said on Tuesday in a conference dedicated to the novelty tested by IVASS - will have to "attribute the power to the Italian supervisory authorities to make use of mystery shopping also for the activities carried out by the operators at a national level and not just for cross-border ones. The process is underway: the European bill being examined by Parliament contains a provision which provides for it, and we hope that it will be approved as soon as possible. The rule, in turn, refers to a secondary regulation of the Supervisory Authorities which will have to define the methods of concrete application. We are already working on this front, to be ready when the primary law is, as we hope, approved".
During a round table organized by Ivass, they also expressed their views on "mystery shopping". Bank of Italy and the Antitrust. According to Magda Bianco, head of the via Nazionale department for customer protection and financial education, this practice "can be an important tool for the world of consumers, who already use it, and for the intermediaries themselves, who can verify the quality of their sales network.
Bianco recalls that there are at least two models of "mystery shopping": the first is limited to the collection of information without immediate action, to then trigger ad hoc inspections; the second instead provides for the drafting of a report and the imposition of immediate sanctions if the incognito inspector finds something wrong.
Giovanni Calabrò, director general for consumer protection of theAntitrust, appreciates the initiative by Ivass and considers "mystery shopping" valid, but also recalls the negative experience of the Competition Authority with the rejection by the TAR and the State Council, of the sanctions against banks for the portability of mortgages, arising from consumer mystery shopping investigations. In those cases, recalls Calabrò, the Tar canceled the Antitrust provisions on the basis of the fact that "a mere clue does not prove". A useful clarification for the legislator, so that he articulates the provision in such a way as to also withstand judicial review.
