Asset management seminar: regulatory developments

Over 70 in-house lawyers, compliance officers and other asset management professionals gathered at Farrer & Co’s offices last week for a seminar on regulatory developments affecting the sector.

Grania Baird spoke about the extension of the Senior Managers & Certification Regime, which comes into force for FCA solo-regulated firms on 9 December 2019. Drawing on useful lessons from the banking sector, Grania explained how the new regime will work in practice, and highlighted key aspects which firms need to be focussing on now.

Jessica Reed and Kya Fear presented on the Asset Management Market Study, with particular focus on the remedies set out in the Policy Statement (PS18/8) and the proposed remedies set out in the Consultation Paper (CP18/9). Jessica also provided some practical insight on the impact of the Asset Management Market Study in respect of recent authorised fund applications to the FCA.

Andy Peterkin spoke about the product governance regime introduced under MiFID II, giving an overview of the regime itself and discussing the learnings that the team has gleaned from seeing the new regime in operation over the last nine months.

Finally, we were joined by our guest speaker, Andrew Lowin from Duff & Phelps who spoke about the EU Commission Proposal for a new prudential regime for MiFID investment firms. If implemented this regime will replace the existing prudential requirements for investment firms under the Capital Requirements Regulation (CRR) and the Capital Requirements Directive (CRD). Andrew discussed which firms would be within scope of the new regime and the fact that certain systemically important ‘bank-like’ investment firms will be reclassified as credit institutions and remain subject to the regime under the CRR and CRD. Other investment firms would be subject to the new regime, with a lighter touch being applied to small non-systemic and non-interconnected firms. Andrew also compared the proposed new approach to the existing prudential classification of firms and the new capital requirements methodology.

The seminar was the second in our Financial Services team’s autumn seminar programme. The final seminar for 2018 will be on Tuesday 27 November 2018 and will cover both an update on Brexit and recent trends in enforcement. If you would be interested in joining us for this event, please contact Christina Cronin at [email protected].