Supervision

Luxembourg’s financial supervisor CSSF on Thursday published an update to its  Reporting Handbook for investment firms. The update integrates the latest version of the reporting framework designed in recent years by the European Banking Authority and introduces a module for threshold monitoring.

Luxembourg’s financial supervisor CSSF has levied a 22,100 euro fine against alternative investment fund manager Pemberton Asset Management SA after a 2020 inspection found  “failures” in risk management, organisational requirements and supervising delegated activities under Luxembourg’s AIFM law, the regulator announced on Tuesday.

The European Union’s top supervisory authority for financial markets has started the new year with a new visual identity and logo that underlines its drive for efficient and resilient markets, the role of sustainability and innovation in its mission, and that should make the organisation“more accessible” to the public.

Luxembourg’s financial supervisors are preparing for tough scrutiny of the annual reports that firms will produce in the coming months. The 2022 reports are required to elaborate in detail on the impact of climate change, on the financial fallout from the Ukraine war and on the effects of inflation and rising interest rates.

Luxembourg branches of investment firms and financial institutions headquartered elsewhere in the European Union from this year onwards will have to ask their auditors to produce an independent report on measures taken to prevent money laundering and the financing of terrorism.

Financial supervisor CSSF is putting on the thumbscrews. It has imposed individual financial fines on a total of seven managers and directors at two specialised investment funds in Luxembourg. The fines were issued because they sent “incomplete information” to the supervisor. It is the first time such fines were issued under a 2007 law that governs these funds. 

After completing a similar transition last year for the supervision of investment fund managers, Luxembourg’s financial supervisors, in close cooperation with bank sector representatives, now have adopted a major modernisation of its banking supervision by overhauling what is known as the Long Form Report. Both banks and supervisors see the new approach as a major step forward. 

Supervisory practices in Ireland, Luxembourg and the Netherlands “appeared insufficient” during the years that Brexit pushed financial services away from the United Kingdom to EU member states, a peer review among European financial supervisors has found. Luxembourg’s supervisor disagrees with the review’s conclusions.

Luxembourg’s financial supervisor CSSF on Wednesday said its annual online survey relating to the fight against money laundering and terrorism financing will start on 15 February next year.

The survey aims to collect standardised key information concerning money laundering and terrorism financing - “ML/TF” - risks to which firms under CSSF supervision are exposed and about the implementation of measures to mitigate these risks. 

A new set of rules - part of an update to the EU’s Mifid 2 directive - took effect in Luxembourg on Tuesday that will set out how banks and asset managers are required to handle their investment products in terms of Environmental, Social and Governance.