Business sectors

Community, social and personal services

In 2025, CEN/TC 452 ‘Assistance Dogs’ will publish three standards, as part of the EN 17984 series, which will provide requirements for:

• prEN 17984-2 ‘Assistance dogs – Part 2: Dog lifetime welfare’;
• prEN 17984-3 ‘Assistance dogs – Part 3: Competencies for assistance dogs professionals’;
• prEN 17984-4 ‘Assistance dogs – Part 4: Pre-training, training and tasks’.

These standards, together with EN 17984-1:2024, are the very first CEN standards on assistance dogs and will contribute towards greater accessibility for all. More specifically, the standards are likely to have a big impact on assistance dog users and, notably, their ability to get formal recognition for their assistance dogs and hence their ability to travel with them.

Post and courier services

In 2025, to complete the two-part series, CEN/TC 331 ‘Postal services’ will develop CEN Technical Specification (CEN/TS) 18055-2 ‘Postal services – Harmonized track and trace events – Part 2: Harmonization of track and trace events – Return flow’. This CEN/TS is being developed under standardization request M/590, and its scope covers returns flows, for instance caused by unsuccessful delivery, ‘return to sender’, or as a service for recipients to send a received shipment back.

A standardized set of events will make it easier to compare them (for instance based on transit times) and allow for industry and commerce to make the best choice for delivery services. Customer calls like ‘Where is my item?’ may be reduced, leading to cost reduction. In addition, offering tracking services will be easier, thus increasing the happiness of customers.

On the other hand, customers will find it easier to get a clear answer on the question ‘Where is my item?’, gain better insight into where in the process an item might be lost, and which party is to be held responsible. In turn, this can lead to quicker compensations and fewer delays.
Financial and insurance services

Financial and insurance services

In February 2025, CEN/TC 445 ‘Digital information Interchange in the Insurance Industry’ will start the development of a new European Standard for data access and portability, in support of the proposed European regulation on financial data access (FIDA). Insurance customers will benefit from standardized digital access to their insurance data and from the implementation of their right to standardized digital data portability from a data holder to a data user, which was already regulated in the GDPR.

Some of the benefits of the standards developed by CEN/TC 445 are:

• digitalization supported by standardized interfaces between software systems;
• saved costs for document printing by the document issuer;
• saved costs for the transportation and storage of physical documents;
• eliminating manual processing by the recipient due to automated processing;
• reduced time for document transfer which facilitates faster processes for an increased satisfaction of insurance customers;
• eco-footprint reduction and societal responsibility responsiveness due to elimination of paper printing and physical transportation of paper documents.

The newly established CEN/TC 475 ‘Finance’ plans to work on a standard on basic financial analysis for private households, which will aim to guide towards a reliable and transparent assessment of the financial situation of private households. ANEC, the voice of consumers in standardization, believes this standard could hold significant potential to help consumers avoid poor investment decisions and reduce the risk of over-indebtedness.

Another new committee, CEN/TC 476 ‘Administration, Finance, and Strategic Planning within Organizations’ will focus on standardizing the qualification of professions and the definition of process requirements. Among others, the technical committee plans to develop standards on the professional profile of credit manager, treasury manager, and CFO, as well as the processes related to these functions.