Perhaps the most contentious development in Luxembourg’s fund management ecosystem this year was the order to management firms, issued by supervisor CSSF, to report back on the costs of investment funds and look at becoming more efficient.
Investment fund managers of Ucits funds in Luxembourg, home to about a third of all such funds in Europe, were ordered to review, and if necessary correct, the way they calculate the costs and fees of their investment funds and report back to the CSSF before April 1 next year.
Luxembourg funds may well be too expensive, Investment Officer wrote when CSSF announced its cost review in October. In Luxembourg, home to one out of three Ucits funds in the European Union, the industry was reluctant to comment on this development. At an industry conference a month later, CSSF director-general Claude Marx (photo) made clear that a focus on efficiency also serves the interest of investors.
“We also see that the cost of business and the cost of management is a big challenge,” Marx said. “I think here, we have to be very careful. It’s vital that we keep the possibility to delegate because it’s also about efficiency and not replicating in every centre of all the expertise. So at the end of the day, it’s in the interest of cost reduction, and it’s in the interest of investors, the counterparties, that we make sure that we have sufficient substance, you know, in our, in our offices here.
Tougher supervisor
CSSF this year appears to have become a bit tougher, reflecting a trend that has been going on among financial supervisors across Europe in recent years.
Just before the end of the year, it looked like the supervisor put on the thumbscrews by issuing a series of fines to Luxembourg firms that had failed to respect reporting deadlines for anti-money laundering. A report on the fine for the Luxembourg unit of Bank of Singapore scored among this year’s most read articles, as did a closer look at Fuchs & Co, which was pressed by CSSF into action on its AML governance and IT problems.
The Luxembourg supervisor also handed out fines to seven individual managers of Specialised Investment Funds for failing to respect a requirement to share incomplete information.
ESG guidance
Elsewhere in regulation, the complexity of investing in ESG and impact funds continued to puzzle both specialists and investors. Calls for more guidance appear to have been heard. ESMA made clear that it believes investors should not be mislead. CSSF provided guidance in similar terms, saying that funds should stick to what they promise to investors.
On a positive note, CSSF closely cooperated with bank sector association ABBL, achieving a major overhaul of what is known as the Long Form Report. After completing a similar transition last year for the supervision of investment fund managers, CSSF and ABBL this year agreed a major modernisation of its banking supervision.