Founder & CEO
Luxembourg’s financial regulator last week announced that it has begun undertaking ESMA’s Common Supervisory Action (CSA) looking at UCITS fund liquidity.
According to the Commission de Surveillance du Secteur Financier(CSSF), it sent out a questionnaire for all Luxembourg-based UCITS managers on 10 February, which will then be followed by a smaller number of onsite inspections and supervisory analyses later this year.The questionnaire, which must be completed by 13 March 2020, should be submitted through the CSSF’s eDesk portal, and a dedicated section to complete the questionnaire will be available shortly. UCITS fund managers will be alerted when the portal is open, the CSSF promised. Other national competent authorities (NCAs) are expected to follow the CSSF shortly.The move comes barely two weeks after ESMA launched its widely anticipated CSA, and underlines the importance regulators are placing on fund liquidity after a series of high-profile mishaps last year.In a panel discussion on 6 February, CSSF Executive Director, Marco Zwick, confirmed that liquidity will remain a key topic throughout the year, while Frederic Palese, Deputy Executive Director at the Autorite des Marches Financiers, added that ‘asset managers can expect the process to be quite intrusive.’