Barriers to Cross-Border Entry in European Retail Financial Services

In a single European financial services market with no entry barriers we would expect price and efficiency differences to be eliminated by foreign entry. In practice, however, there are a range of entry barriers in the retail financial services sector. Generally, one can distinguish between regulatory barriers to cross-border entry and market- or industry inherent entry barriers.1 While the former are attacked by the internal market programme, the latter are likely to persist and remain largely unaffected by regulatory efforts towards market integration.