There is a clear need for the EU to develop a more efficient system for exchanging information on the criminal records of non-EU citizens. At the same time, any proposal to update the current system must ensure consistency with the EU Charter of Fundamental Rights and the Lisbon Treaty and fully respect data protection principles, the European Data Protection Supervisor (EDPS) said today, as he published his Opinion on the Commission’s Proposal for a Regulation on ECRIS-TCN.
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Nordea has joined the we.trade consortium as founding partner. The consortium is, in conjunction with IBM, developing a platform based on distributed ledger technology (DLT) that aims at making domestic and cross-border commerce easier, safer and more efficient for companies. It is the first such blockchain-based trade finance platform, marking a milestone in the practical adoption of DLT in the financial industry. In entering the we.trade initiative, Nordea joins Banco Santander, Deutsche Bank, HSBC, KBC, Natixis, Rabobank, Société Générale and UniCredit as a founder member of the consortium and extending its geographical coverage into the Nordic markets.
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The Basel Committee’s oversight body, the Group of Central Bank Governors and Heads of Supervision (GHOS), has endorsed the outstanding Basel III post-crisis regulatory reforms. “The endorsement of the Basel III reforms represents a major milestone that will make the capital framework more robust and improve confidence in banking systems,” said Mario Draghi, Chairman of the GHOS and President of the ECB.
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The Governing Council of the European Central Bank (ECB) approved the consolidation of the Eurosystem’s real-time gross settlement system TARGET2 and the securities settlement platform TARGET2-Securities (T2S), and the development of a Eurosystem Collateral Management System. Both projects will modernise existing systems and increase overall efficiency.
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Since November 21, Polish has become the sixth language on Risk & Compliance Platform Europe. The platform itself was launched at the end of 2014.
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Recent disclosure of the Governance Committees meeting papers of the Financial Cunduct Autority (FCA) under the Freedom of Information Act has led to speculation about the reason that the FCA did not publish the full Skilled Person’s Report following the independent review of Royal Bank of Scotland’s (RBS) treatment of small and medium-sized enterprise (SME) customers transferred to its Global Restructuring Group (GRG). It has been suggested that FCA chose not to publish the report because they were afraid of legal action being taken against them.
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The bank for International Settlements (BIS) has published a paper that shows how banks in Europe use Credit Default Swaps (CDS). They have analysed whether and how banks use the CDS market to buy or sell protection on the default of firms they lend to (via syndicated loans). Read more about the BIS-paper on our website.
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Are you suspicious? This is a key question at the heart of efforts to tackle money laundering: if you work for a bank or other financial institution and have suspicions money laundering is happening, you have a legal duty to speak up. Your suspicion could be based on pure intuition – a sense that something just doesn’t quite add up – but the law nonetheless expects you to act. In his speech, Rob Gruppetta, Head of the Financial Crime Department at the FCA, he tackels this issue. You can read the speeh on our website.
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The result of the annual review of the significance of credit institutions, as well as changes in group structures and other developments that affected five banking groups in 2017, brings the number of significant institutions to 119, down from 125 at the beginning of 2017.
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Staff from the European Commission, in liaison with staff from the European Central Bank, visited Dublin from 28 November to 1 December to conduct the eighth post-programme surveillance (PPS) review for Ireland. This was coordinated with an International Monetary Fund’s Staff visit. Staff from the European Stability Mechanism also participated in the meetings on aspects related to its Early Warning System. The main objective of PPS is to assess the country’s capacity to repay loans granted under the former EU-IMF financial assistance programme and, if necessary, to recommend corrective actions.
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