The European Central Bank (ECB) will undertake a comprehensive assessment of five Croatian banks. This exercise, which will comprise an asset quality review (AQR) and a stress test, follows Croatia’s submission of a request in May 2019 seeking to establish close cooperation between the ECB and Hrvatska narodna banka. A comprehensive assessment is required as part of the process of establishing close cooperation between the ECB and the national competent authority of an EU Member State whose currency is not the euro.
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The FCA published Final Guidance which sets out the cryptoasset activities it regulates. This is in response to the FCA’s consultation published earlier this year. The Guidance will help firms understand whether their cryptoasset activities fall under FCA regulation. This will allow firms to have a better understanding of whether they need to be authorised and what they need to do to ensure they are compliant.
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The Federal Reserve Board on Monday announced that the Federal Reserve Banks will develop a new round-the-clock real-time payment and settlement service, called the FedNow℠ Service, to support faster payments in the United States. The rapid evolution of technology presents a pivotal opportunity for the Federal Reserve and the payment industry to modernize the nation’s payment system and establish a safe and efficient foundation for the future.

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The Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC) inform national banks, federal savings associations, and federal branches and agencies (collectively, banks) of sound fraud risk management principles. Fraud risk management principles can be implemented in a variety of ways and may not always be structured within a formal fraud risk management program. Regardless of the structure, fraud risk management should be commensurate with the bank’s risk profile. Banks with significant and far-reaching retail-oriented business activities should have well-documented fraud risk management programs with appropriate monitoring, measurements and reporting, and mitigation.

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Forward guidance, i.e. communication by a central bank about the likely future path of interest rates, usually reduces uncertainty. But it matters how this is done in practice, because forward guidance with a short time horizon can raise uncertainty. This occurs if the forward guidance impairs the aggregation of private information in financial markets, thus making market prices less informative. Central banks often make statements about the likely future path of interest rates by providing so-called forward guidance. Forward guidance is especially used if the central bank can no longer cut policy rates because they are already as low as possible (i.e. they have reached their lower bound). Continue reading…

The Commission is presenting a Communication summarising a set of reports relating to the implementation of the Union’s legal anti-money laundering/ counter terrorism financing framework. The findings aim to point to where implementation can be improved and to foster new discussions with relevant stakeholders to further improve the EU’s work in this field.

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The Commission is presenting a Communication summarising a set of reports relating to the implementation of the Union’s legal anti-money laundering/ counter terrorism financing framework. The findings aim to point to where implementation can be improved and to foster new discussions with relevant stakeholders to further improve the EU’s work in this field.

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The European Banking Authority (EBA) published clarifications to a fourth set of issues that had been raised by participants of its Working Group (WG) on APIs under PSD2. The clarifications respond to issues raised on the confirmation of payment execution, biometrics and authentication on mobile apps, access to non-payment account information, stress testing, qualified eIDAS certificates for Account Servicing Payment Service Providers (ASPSPs), the 4 times per day access by Account Initiation Service Providers (AISPs), and the Sharing of payment account number with Payment Initiation Service Providers (PISPs).

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The General Data Protection Regulation (hereafter ‘the Regulation’) applies across the European Union since over one year. It is at the centre of a coherent and modernised EU data protection landscape that also includes the Data Protection Law Enforcement Directive and the Data Protection Regulation for EU institutions and bodies. This framework is to be completed by the e-Privacy Regulation which is currently in the legislative process.

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