ESMA: New Union Strategic Supervisory priorities

14/01/2021

0n 13 November 2020, ESMA has identified costs and performance for retail investment products and market data quality as the Union Strategic Supervisory Priorities for national competent authorities (NCAs).

Under these Priorities, the specific topics on which NCAs will undertake supervisory action in 2021, coordinated by ESMA, are: costs and fees charged by fund managers; and improving the quality of transparency data reported under MiFIR. The reasons for selecting these two Priorities are the following:

Costs and Performance:

The area of costs and performance is a key part of investor protection. ESMA considers that problems linked to cost and performance are multifaceted due to the lack of transparency and undue costs or differences observed in the application of certain MiFID requirements across Member States.

Data Quality:

Data is now a core element of securities markets regulation and it is a vital component of NCAs’ data-driven approaches to supervision. The reporting datasets and requirements have grown exponentially since the 2008 financial crisis and making progress in improving data quality is important to investors, market participants and regulators as reliable and timely data is needed to deter and detect market abuse, provide transparency calculations and identify systemic and counterparty risk building up in jurisdictions.