De Nederlandsche Bank announces that the three financial supervisors in the Netherlands (DNB, AFM and PVK) will as of today start searching automatically on the web for illegal intermediaries and organisations that provide financial services without a license. The system will also be used to verify if legal suppliers comply with information provision rules.
The move is understandable from a historical perspective / starting point where one believes that the whole world can be monitored and regulated. However, there must come some time when supervisors will discover that it may be wiser to outline the boundaries and limitations of their work and leave some responsibility to consumers themselves. My guess is, that it's a lot more efficient to provide on-line access to bank supervision registers and educate consumers to check at the supervisors website if a provider exists in that register.
