The European Securities and Markets Authority (ESMA), the EU’s financial markets regulator and supervisor, has today published its follow-up report to the peer review on certain aspects of the compliance function under MiFID I. The report shows that, overall, the National Competent Authorities (NCAs) assessed improved their practices following the 2017 peer reviews findings and recommendations.

The NCAs included in this follow-up report – CySEC (CY), HCMC (EL), CBI (IS), AFM (NL) and ATVP (SI) – have made progress by strengthening their supervisory frameworks, undertaking investigations and thematic reviews and making use of their enforcement tools to deter poor behaviour by firms.

Two NCAs, CySEC and CBI, are encouraged to continue this process in the following manner:

CySEC should consolidate its supervisory approach to ensure ongoing supervisory focus on firms’ compliance function
CBI should structurally integrate all elements of the ESMA Guidelines on the compliance function under MiFID into its supervisory approach and increase its controls on the compliance function of non-banking investment for firms.