ESMA publishes latest Data Quality Report    

The European Securities and Markets Authority (ESMA), the EU’s financial markets regulator and supervisor, today published the third edition of its Data Quality Report under the European Markets Infrastructure Regulation (EMIR) and the Securitised Financing Transactions Regulation (SFTR) reporting regimes.   

The report highlights the increased use of transaction data by EU financial regulatory authorities in their day-to-day supervision and identifies significant quality improvements following a new approach to data monitoring.

EBA consults on credit servers’ adequate knowledge       

The European Banking Authority (EBA) is consulting on its draft Guidelines on the assessment of adequate knowledge and experience of the management or administrative organ of credit servicers, as a whole, under the Non-Performing Loans Directive. The Guidelines aim at ensuring that the organs are suitable to conduct the business of the credit servicer in a competent and responsible manner.  

The Guidelines specify common criteria, taking into account the principle of proportionality, to assess the collective adequate knowledge and experience of the management, on the basis of the individual knowledge and experience of the members of these organs. The Guidelines will apply to competent authorities and credit servicers independent of their governance structures (unitary structure, two tiers or other structures), without advocating or preferring any specific structure as set out in the defined scope of application. 

The consultation runs until 19 July 2023. 

FINRA fines Barclays Capital $2.5m over reporting failures        

FINRA’s Letter of Acceptance, Waiver and Consent states that “From January 2011 to December 2022, Barclays Capital failed to report, or inaccurately reported, over-the-counter options positions to the Large Options Positions Reporting (LOPR) system in approximately 4.3 million instances in violation of FINRA Rules 2360(b)(5) and 2010. The firm also failed to establish and maintain a supervisory system reasonably designed to achieve compliance with FINRA Rule 2360(b)(5) during the same period in violation of NASD Rule 3010 and FINRA Rules 31102 and 2010.” 

Barclays Capital had previously been fined $750,000 in January 2014 for similar offences. 

ASIC publishes report on scam related activities        

The Australian Securities and Investments Commission (ASIC) has published a review of the current scam related activities of the four major Australian banks. The report finds that: 

• bank customers are overwhelmingly the bearer of scam losses, accounting for 96% of total scam losses across the banks; 
• collectively, the banks detected and stopped a low proportion of scam payments made by their customers (approximately 13% of scam payments);
• the reimbursement and/or compensation rate varied but was low across the individual banks, ranging from 2 to 5%; 
• customers who made a complaint were more likely to receive some form of compensation payment from their bank, compared to customers who did not; and 
• across three banks for whom data was available,  reimbursement and/or compensation was made in only around 11% of the cases where there was a scam loss. 

ASIC state that the overall approach to scams strategy, governance and reporting at the major banks was highly variable and, overall, less mature than they expected, adding that a bank’s scams framework should include: 

• a strategy to address and respond to scams; 
• appropriate governance arrangements; and 
• effective reporting, including on customer experience and outcomes.