Andreas Stepnitzka, EFAMA Deputy Director, Regulatory Policy, comments:
The Packaged Retail Investment and Insurance Products (PRIIPs) regulation requires a three-page Key Information Document (KID) when financial products (such as funds, structured products or unit-linked insurances) are sold to retail investors. The KID’s objective is to provide essential and standardised information to investors to allow them to make an informed investment decision. In essence, the PRIIP KID is the successor of the UCITS Key Investor Information Document (KIID), and is meant to replace it in the near future.
Before switching from the UCITS KIID to the PRIIP KID, fund managers want to ensure that the information provided is relevant and non-misleading. Due to the PRIIPs Regulation’s large scope, this is no easy endeavour. In our opinion, both goals cannot be fully achieved simultaneously and some trade-off will have to be found between meaningful and comparable information. This conundrum can only be solved by the outstanding review of the PRIIPs Regulation. In the meantime, EFAMA is providing industry feedback on how to best transition funds from the UCITS KIID to the PRIIP KID, ensuring that there is sufficient time for such a transition.
Andreas Stepnitzka, EFAMA Deputy Director, Regulatory Policy, comments:
The European Commission recently adopted amendments to the Packaged Retail and Insurance-based Investment Products (PRIIPs) Regulation and the Undertakings for Collective Investment in Transferable Securities (UCITS) Directive. However, in contrast to earlier plans, the adoption of the revised Regulatory Technical Standards (RTS) amending Commission Delegated Regulation (EU) 2017/653 has been postponed.
EFAMA and several other financial industry associations, raised concerns in response to a consultation conducted by the European Commission on planned changes to the Packaged Retail and Insurance-based Investment Products (PRIIPs) framework.
The unexpected delay to the adoption of the revised PRIIPs RTS cuts the implementation period for the industry by more than two months. This leaves PRIIPs manufacturers and distributors with a too short period instead of the original timeframe of 12 months to implement the new rules.
We welcome yesterday's vote by the European Parliament plenary, formally adopting the trilogue agreement on the Commission's initiative to remove cross-border barriers to the distribution of investment funds.
This marks a decisive recognition of the need to postpone the application of the PRIIPs disclosure regime for UCITS by two years, in light of the regime's documented shortcomings. It also allows the European Commission more time to conduct a thorough review of the same within one year.
The Committees vote confirmed important amendments to the Commissions original proposal, i.e. extending the premarketing definition to established EU AIFs and removing the numerical thresholds conditioning the de-notification of funds from host jurisdictions.
In support of our call for additional time to implement the PRIIPs rules, we have produced an infographic that summarises the challenges our members face replacing UCITS KIIDS with PRIIP KIDs. The infographic shows the many entities involved in the process and the steps required to prepare a PRIIP KID. Feel free to make use of this infographic.
Funds face unique challenges in performing intermediary oversight, and especially so because of MiFID II requirements, changing regulatory landscapes, and the absence of an industry agreed-upon standard between funds and their distribution channels. To help address these challenges, a dedicated working group developed a uniform due diligence questionnaire (DDQ) that will serve as the standard for investment funds (UCITS and AIFs) in performing onboarding and ongoing oversight of distribution channels.