Supervision

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.

Luxembourg financial regulator CSSF today announced that it had found “satisfactory” both market participants’ understanding of the risks of AML/CFT activities and the related mitigation measures that they had put into place, in a recent thematic review of money-laundering or terrorism financing checks by its on-site inspection unit.

The exact arrival dates of the Financial Action Task Force on-site assessors in Luxembourg remain a secret, so expect them to arrive anytime soon. The two weeks these unnamed individuals will spend this month in Luxembourg are just a fraction of the 18-month audit to which Luxembourg’s anti-money laundering rules and practices are currently undergoing. 

Luxembourg‘s financial supervisor on Monday said it has slapped a fine of 10,000 euro on a Luxembourg subsidiary of Russian state-owned gas producer Gazprom because it was late in filing its annual report for last year.

Gaz Capital SA is fully controlled by Gazprom and held more than 13 billion euro in total assets at the end of 2021, trade data from Luxembourg shows. The firm posted its annual accounts to Luxembourg’s business register on 27 July, well beyond the deadline of three months within the close of the year.

A crucial test awaits Luxembourg’s financial centre in just a couple of months. The Financial Action Task Force (FATF) – the global anti money-laundering and combatting terrorism financing (AML/CFT) watchdog – plans to visit in November for an in-depth audit. How is the Grand Duchy placed?

New rules, new details and a new terminology regarding financial sector outsourcing are being introduced by Luxembourg’s financial regulator CSSF with the presentation of its widely discussed ‘circular 22/806’. These changes, with significant consequences for the use of IT and cloud services, bring greater clarity within the  regulatory framework.

Assets worth over 200 million euros stored at Luxembourg’s freeport, formally known as  High-Security Hub, have been frozen as part of the EU sanctions against Russia, Luxembourg finance minister Yuriko Backes has told parliament. This follows the 4.3 billion euros in frozen Russian-linked assets that were announced by the ministry of finance last week.