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. The questionnaire is meant to save fund managers and distributors time, difficulty, and expense by streamlining the process of distributor oversight.
 

The DDQ is publicly available for use by any fund manager or distributor (since 01 June 2020). The DDQ is not compulsory, provided free of charge and is free of any intellectual property rights, and it will be updated on an annual basis to reflect any changes in the market or regulatory framework. You can download the DDQ as a Word document and it can also to be found here.        

For additional information, or if you have questions about the due diligence questionnaire, please contact info@efama.org.

About the DDQ Working Group
 

In 2019 a dedicated working group of distributors and fund managers, supported by ICI Global and EFAMA, was founded in 2019 in order to develop industry standards for distributor oversight and due diligence practices for UCITS and AIFs.
 

The goal of the working group was to create a comprehensive questionnaire which fund distributors and platforms could complete once annually and make available to all fund companies requesting the information. The project began with the collection of existing practices and widely used questionnaires, then went through multiple iterations to include all regulatory and cross border distribution considerations. The result is an industry standard questionnaire that can be used by UCITS and AIFs distributed anywhere including Europe, the United States, Latin America, or elsewhere.