Grant Thornton’s "The Financial Services Insider" is a Quarterly Newsletter designed to help you navigate the constantly changing regulatory landscape within which your business operates.
"The Financial Services Insider" covers the main regulatory developments in the Financial Services sector, published by the EU and Greek competent authorities the previous quarter, in order to help you remain up-to-date with the most significant regulatory updates affecting your organization.
The most important highlights of the 2nd quarter of 2021
The 2nd quarter of 2021 is characterized by increased activity at various aspects with ESG/climate change, Risk Management, AML, Capital Markets, MIFID II and Fintech related areas experiencing a constantly growing regulatory and other stakeholders focus, resulting to the continuation of a number of research and other initiatives and the issuance of various consultation and /or explanatory papers setting the grounds for future evolutions both at international and local level.
Anti-Money Laundering (AML)
The Financial Action Task Force supervised crypto-assets for anti-money laundering. The EBA consulted on its proposal for a central AML/CFT database and it has also launched a public consultation on new Guidelines on cooperation and information exchange. Regarding Hellenic government evolutions we note the initiation of the electronic platform eGov-KYC operations from April 12, 2021 and the issuance of a regulation regarding the implementation of AML activities in the gambling services market.
Capital markets
The Financial Stability Board published a final report of the evaluation of too-big-tofail reforms for banks. ECB published i) the Annual Report of 2020 ii) the updated list of regional governments and local authorities (RGLAs) that may be treated as central governments (CGs), iii) the banking statistics for the fourth quarter of 2020. The European Commission approved the extension of the “Hercules” Project. The International Monetary Fund (IMF) published an upgrade to global growth in its World Economic Outlook “Managing Divergent Recoveries”.
Corporate Governance
ESMA published its technical Advice on Fines and Penalties for Benchmarks Administrators. The Hellenic Capital Market Commission published Q&As regarding Art.44 of Law 4449/2017 and it has adopted regulatory decisions and guidelines in accordance with the Law 4706/2020 on corporate governance and capital market modernization. The FSI published a research on the growing accountability regimes of banking supervisors.
ESG
The European Commission took further steps to channel money towards sustainable activities. IOSCO held roundtables with global stakeholders regarding the urgent need for globally consistent, comparable and reliable sustainability disclosure standards. EC published a communication on its Global Approach to Research and Innovation and proposed a new approach for a sustainable blue economy. The Basel Committee released two significant reports, one on climate related financial risk categories; and one on measurement methodologies.
Fintech
ECB published i) the results of the public consultation on a digital euro and ii) a report regarding the use of Distributed Ledger Technology (DLT) in post-trade processes. The Hellenic Capital Market announced the first registration of providers of exchange services between virtual currencies. The European Commission published a proposal about new rules towards achieving excellence and building Trust in Artificial Intelligence and it has also published a Q&A session regarding the proposed new rules and actions in Artificial Intelligence.
MIFID II
ESMA published its Final Report on the functioning of the regime for SME Growth Markets and of Organized Trading Facilities. ESMA makes new bond liquidity data available and published the results of the Annual transparency calculations for non-equity instruments. It has also published data for the systemic internaliser calculations for equity, equity-like instruments etc. Moreover, ESMA has dispatched a consultation on Commodity Derivatives Technical Standards as part of MIFID II recovery plan.
Risk Management
Following the completion of TRIM (Target Review of Internal Models), the largest project ever carried out by European Central Bank, relevant report with the results from 200 on-site investigations conducted in 65 significant banks using internal models has been published on April 2021.
Other
The European Payment Council (EPC) published a guide for joining payment service providers. ECB published legal acts on supervisory requirements for systemically important payment systems. The Hellenic Bank Association published the terms and conditions for the establishment and operation of the Bank of Greece Regulatory Sandbox.
