The Front Page, Asset Management & Investment Funds: EU & International Developments


ESMA guidelines on transaction reporting under MiFID II and MiFIR

ESMA published a press release together with updated guidelines on transaction reporting, order record keeping and clock synchronisation under the MiFID II Directive and the Markets in Financial Instruments Regulation (MiFIR) and a mark up to show the changes.

The guidelines are being translated into the official EU languages. When this process is complete or has been completed, national competent authorities (NCAs) must notify ESMA whether they comply or intend to comply with the guidelines (giving reasons for non-compliance), within two months of publication of the official EU language versions of the guidelines on ESMA's website.

PRIIPs

The European Supervisory Authorities (ESAs) published further guidance on the Key Information Document (KID) requirements for Packaged Retail and Insurance-based Investment Products (PRIIPs) laid down in the European Commission's Delegated Regulation (EU) 2017/653. The guidance promotes common supervisory approaches and practices in the implementation of the KID and consists of:

  • Additional Questions and Answers (Q&A) which includes a new section covering "General topics" (with a Q&A on the categorisation of a retail investor) and new Q&As on; Market risk assessment; Methodology for assessing credit risk; Summary risk indicator; and Presentation of costs.
     
  • Diagrams explaining the risk and reward calculations required to prepare the KID, and including sample calculations.

Stakeholders are invited to submit any new questions to PRIIPs@eiopa.europa.eu.

A Corrigendum was published to Commission Delegated Regulation (EU) 2017/653 of 8 March 2017 supplementing Regulation (EU) No 1286/2014 by laying down regulatory technical standards with regard to the presentation, content, review and revision of key information documents and the conditions for fulfilling the requirement to provide such documents.

Anti-Money Laundering / Combating the Financing of Terror / Corruption

European Commission invites feedback on roadmap on widening access to centralised bank and payment account registries.

In the context of 5AMLD, the European Commission published an inception impact assessment on access to centralised bank account registries.

The proposed 5AMLD will likely require member states to establish automated centralised mechanisms, such as central registries or central electronic data retrieval systems, of bank and payment accounts. Member states would be required to grant access to these registries to financial intelligence units (FIUs) and NCAs to prevent money laundering and terrorist financing. The Commission believes that the provisions establishing centralised registers will likely be included in the final text of 5AMLD, which is expected to be adopted by the co-legislators later in 2017.Because the scope of 5AMLD is limited to the prevention of money laundering and terrorist financing, access to the registries can only be granted to FIUs and NCAs, but not to other law enforcement agencies.

In its February 2016 terrorist financing action plan, the Commission announced that it would explore the possibility of a self-standing legislative instrument to allow for broader access to the registries for other law enforcement investigations and by other authorities (such as tax authorities, asset recovery offices (AROs) and anti-corruption authorities (ACAs)). The Commission believes that this would contribute to the prevention of organised crime, and other serious offences, by enabling public authorities to get timely access to information on the identity of holders of bank and payment accounts in their member state. This would facilitate criminal investigations, as well as the confiscation and recovery of criminal assets. The Commission also considers that banks are likely to benefit from the initiative, as they should experience a reduction in the administrative costs of regularly having to reply to authorities' requests for information.

The Commission's webpage invites comments on the roadmap until 6 September 2017. The roadmap has an indicative planning date of Q1 2018.

For more information please contact a member of the Asset Management & Investment Funds Team.

Date Published: 05 September 2017