On the eve of the European Structured Investment Products Association's (Eusipa) 10th anniversary, SRP spoke to its secretary general, Thomas Wulf (pictured), about the trade body’s achievements for 2019 and how it can further increase transparency and standards across single markets in Europe.
“Internally, 2019 was a good, if busy, year,” said Wulf.
Apart from coordinating a dialogue with the European Supervisory Authorities (ESAs) on the upcoming Priips Regulatory Technical Standards (RTS) changes, the trade body also relaunched the Eusipa map, integrating credit-linked note payoffs, whilst adding Luxembourg’s Luxipa as its newest member.
“We are now, of course, operating in the context of a new Commission and EU parliament,” said Wulf.
“The important Econ committee contains diametrically opposed positions on how to regulate retail financial services, indeed on how far they should be regulated.”
According to Wulf, re-elected German conservative MEP Manfred Ferber takes the “liberal” side in that debate and Green Party MEP Sven Giegold, who is also re-elected, holds a more “interventionist” view. “We don’t yet know how that will balance out,” he said.
The application of ESG labels for structured products, such as the quality standard for sustainable and socially responsible financial products introduced by Febelfin, the Belgian federation of the financial sector, will generally be a “major point of discussion at both national and EU levels”, said Wulf.
“Commissioner Valdis Dombrovskis, a Latvian conservative, has not yet detailed the priorities of his responsibility for ‘Economy that Works for People’, but has indicated that ESG will be among them.
“Other forthcoming topics include finalising the Priips RTS review, including adoption of RTS by the EU Commission and garnering the necessary parliamentary support,” said Wulf, adding that the EU Commission is also consulting on improvements to Mifid 2.
Eusipa will celebrate its 10th anniversary at the end of this month by marking up 10 major achievements, including the Eusipa Map, a visualisation tool, which has been adopted by issuers, platforms and data providers as the accepted classification of structured payoffs, sorted by risk levels.
During the period, Eusipa issued voluntary standards governing members’ conduct in relation to the issuance, marketing, sale and trade of structured investment products, and issued product standards guidance before they were mandated by Mifid and Priips legislation. It also published and edited training and education resource Inside Structured Products in collaboration with Derivative Partners while in 2017, the association was key to achieving the postponement of the Priips regulation by a year.
‘This is a good time to celebrate not just high-profile, high stakes achievements such as our technical and communication work on the Priip legislation, but the day-to-day efforts that have helped create transparency and standards across a whole range of single markets in Europe,’ said Heike Arbter (pictured right), Eusipa chair.