EFAMA wholeheartedly supports a retail investment strategy that gives EU citizens the necessary tools and the confidence to put their savings to work by investing in capital markets.
EFAMA has been looking at legislative proposals with a direct impact on asset management companies and services, and closely follows any regulatory developments of critical importance to the sector. In addition to issues related to risk management and financial stability, high up on the agenda of EFAMA members is the framework for a prudential regime for Investment Firms (IFD/R), and related implementing measures directly descending from such framework.
EFAMA is focused on minimising the impact of the rules on asset management companies, in particular those holding a limited MiFID license. Key to the sector is the need for proportionality, especially firms that are not authorised to hold client money/securities, or to deal on their own account.
EFAMA wholeheartedly supports a retail investment strategy that gives EU citizens the necessary tools and the confidence to put their savings to work by investing in capital markets.
ICMA’s AMIC and EFAMA have submitted a joint response to the IOSCO consultation on fund liquidity management by open-ended funds.
The response highlights how industry practices and existing regulatory provisions in Europe are well aligned with the Liquidity Risk Management (LRM) recommendations issued by IOSCO in 2018 (Annex 1).
EFAMA believes that ESMA’s draft ‘marketing communication’ Guidelines still require important clarifications to ensure full alignment between them and MiFID II’s Commission Delegated Regulation Article 44. This alignment is essential to ensure coherent rules for fund management companies and distributors. Unfortunately, parts of the proposed Guidelines are overly prescriptive and may unintentionally make some marketing materials vaguer or even inconsistent with local MiFID requirements for distributors.
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 EFAMA Asset Management in Europe report aims at providing facts and figures to gain a better understanding of the role of the European asset management industry. It takes a different approach from that of the other EFAMA research reports, on two grounds. Firstly, this report does not focus exclusively on investment funds, but it also analyses the assets that are managed by asset managers under the form of discretionary mandates. Secondly, the report focuses on the countries where the investment fund assets are managed rather than on the countries in which the funds are domiciled.