Andreas Stepnitzka, EFAMA Deputy Director, Regulatory Policy, comments:
EFAMA monitors issues surrounding fund distribution and disclosures to investors. These include investor protection and disclosure issues arising from the evolving PRIIPs and MiFID frameworks, the shift towards digital distribution tools, and the continued integration of ESG considerations into fund products.
Andreas Stepnitzka, EFAMA Deputy Director, Regulatory Policy, comments:
EFAMA provided high-level comments to the Commission’s consultation on the potential review of the Directive on Distance Marketing of Consumer Financial Services.
We agree with the Commission’s interpretation that the Directive is seen as a “safety net” for financial services not already subject to product-specific legislation. Fund and asset managers are already subject to various, more stringent and detailed sectoral legislations, such as (but not limited to) UCITS, AIFMD and MiFID as well as the (more recent) Cross-Border Fund Distribution Directives.
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.
The European ESG Template (EET) is meant to facilitate the necessary exchange of data between product manufacturer and distributor for the purpose of fulfilling ESG-related regulatory requirements contained in the SFDR, relevant provisions of the Taxonomy Regulation, and the relevant delegated acts complementing MiFID II and IDD. The EET V1 is based on the regulatory situation on the day of publication and will be reviewed regularly depending on the evolving regulation, and at least confirmed annually. With regard to the MiFID target market, the EET interacts with the EMT V4.
The European PRIIPs Template v2.0 (EPT) incorporates the necessary changes based on the revised PRIIPs RTS, published by in the Official Journal of the European Union in December 2021.
The EPT is intended to be used for products sold from January 2023 onwards. It is important that data contained in the EPT is communicated by asset managers to insurers in good time before this date, bearing in mind any national market specificities.
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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.