Andreas Stepnitzka, EFAMA Deputy Director, Regulatory Policy, comments:
Andreas Stepnitzka, EFAMA Deputy Director, Regulatory Policy, comments:
EFAMA has today published its latest monthly Investment Fund Industry Fact Sheet, which provides net sales data on UCITS, and AIFs sold in August 2021, at European level and by country of fund domiciliation.
The Commission aims to present a legislative proposal to address the tax-induced debt-equity bias, also to support the action plan for the Capital Markets Union and to encourage companies to finance their investment through equity contributions rather than through debt financing.
“Oliver Wyman’s study ‘Caught on Tape’ provides a perplexing take on Consolidated Tape for Europe. Sure enough, it starts with accurate observations: the high number of trading venues in Europe, the resultant fragmented liquidity, unseen liquidity due to the lack of a consolidated tape, and the fact that leading markets like the US and Canada today benefit from a real time consolidated tape.
The current lack of quality pre- and post-trade data and the fragmentation of data sources remain an obstacle to the completion of the Capital Markets Union. The benefits of a real-time Consolidated Tape are wide-ranging: from market surveillance for supervisors, to best execution and an improved view on trading opportunities for retail investors, to portfolio management and pre- and post-trade analysis for fund managers to name a few.
EFAMA has been at the forefront of efforts to urge authorities to raise financial literacy levels in the general population through widespread and improved financial and investor education initiatives. We are also a long-time supporter of IOSCO's World Investor Week and organise a yearly event on investor education.
The old-age dependency ratio in the EU continues to increase; Eurostat’s recent figures project that by 2050, there will be fewer than 2 working-age adults for each person aged 65 or older, versus just under 3 today.
Investor education initiatives are essential to improve financial literacy and empower citizens to make sound decisions when managing their savings. If citizens do not have the basic knowledge to understand financial concepts such as risk diversification, compound interest and real rate of return, they won’t know where to start or what to ask should they wish to invest their savings. A lack of sufficient financial literacy in most European countries helps explain why the vast majority of households don’t directly invest any of their savings in the capital markets.
EFAMA has joined together with the European Sustainable Investment Forum (Eurosif), the Principles for Responsible Investment (PRI), the Institutional Investors Group on Climate Change (IIGCC) and over 90 investors and financial market participants, to call on the European Commission to uphold the integrity and ambition of the first set of European Sustainability Reporting Standards (ESRS).
The draft ESRS Delegated Act presents several potential implications for investors and entails major inconsistencies across the Sustainable Finance legislative framework. In our policy paper we focus on the alignment of ESG reporting on two crucial areas: (1) the requirements of the Sustainable Finance Disclosure Regulation (SFDR), notably the Principal Adverse Impact indicators (PAIs), and (2) the Transition Plans and targets.
EFAMA has responded to the European Supervisory Authorities' (ESAs) joint consultation setting out various regulatory technical standards (RTS) for the Sustainable Finance Disclosure Regulation (SFDR). They propose new sustainability indicators in relation to principle adverse impacts (PAIs) and additional disclosures to the ‘do no significant harm’ principle, as well as some other modifications.
EU asset managers, banks and brokers are today urging policy makers not to concede to pressure which will lead to suboptimal outcomes in the review of the Markets in Financial Instruments Directive (MiFID/R).
EFAMA offers a detailed view on the active accounts proposal in this paper. Costs to the end investor are broken down into two main buckets i) operational build-out and ii) in nominal terms the much larger impact of loss of netting efficiencies. Potential impacts on financial stability are also examined, with a focus on the widening basis which will result from large volumes of one-directional flows onto an EU-CCP. The impact on margins and procyclicality are also studied. The analysis points to increased liquidity risk for
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