Active Institutional Investors, Impact Investing and some new trends. The rise of the Gen-Z

Technology and innovation: new ways to do well-known things?
Call for paper Giustino Fortunato University, Benevento
Monica Cossu
Post-Millennials and Financial Markets: rethinking Financial Literacy in the post-pandemic era.

It has been noted that the rules that make up the so-called financial markets law are ever more numerous, more and more heterogeneous, more and more full of technicalities and more and more changing over time; in some specific areas, soft law rules are added to the law to stimulate the best behavior of operators.
Stability over time, as a characteristic requirement of traditional law that gives security to legal relationships on the basis of a presumable and reasonable stability of the rules, is radically compromised: in the financial markets the law provides for the present, and not for the future. Territoriality, another characteristic requirement of traditional law, is radically compromised: there is a strong need for "harmonized" rules beyond the European level, while it is increasingly difficult to identify where financial transactions take place, and consequently which rules apply.
For the retail investor (and even more for the retail-consumer investor) it is impossible to follow the evolution of the rules, know all the rules, acquire all the "relevant" information necessary to make aware investments, even when he is a diligent and discreetly shrewd investor, and he suffer from information overload.
The legislative system based on transparency, on the communication to the public of sensitive and relevant information, on a complex set of rules of conduct, has achieved the goal of providing retail investors with complete financial information in terms of quality and quantity (often overabundant) while the objective of guiding them in investment choices and preserving their trust has failed.
The product governance model that MiFID II inaugurated meets numerous criticisms, and in a strongly managerial and almost paternalistic perspective selects financial products ex ante of a given customer-target of reference, with the dual objective of preventing the retail investor from choosing financial instruments that are unsuitable for their financial assets, their investment objectives and their profile risk, and inhibiting the distribution of certain financial products to retail customers.
In the search for the deep reasons for this apparent failure of regulation, little attention has been paid to the total absence of financial education and culture in retail customers: no rules of conduct and no pre-contractual information, even the most complete, can compensate for the client's financial illiteracy, and bridge cultural asymmetries between the contractual parties.
Although the obligations imposed on intermediaries and professional operators are diversified for professional customers and for retail customers in terms of quality, quantity and frequency of the information (in compliance with the general “appropriateness” and “adequacy” rule), the retail customer is normally unable to understand the information that is intended for him.
Therefore, the lawmakers should pursue the objective of increasing the financial education of the adult population, given the functional illiteracy that characterizes large sections of the active population, similarly to how in the “consumer code” they have programmatically chosen to pursue the objective of consumer education and to train consumers aware of their interests.
Attention should be focused in particular on "Generation Z", that of Post Millennials or digital natives, those born between 1995 and 2010 who are currently between 10 and 25 years of age.
For this even more than for the previous generations financial education must