Regulatory experts hoping for proposed regulations for retail products to be delayed were disappointed this week when a key European Parliament committee did not discuss the topic.
It was hoped the Parliament’s Economic and Monetary Affairs Committee would discuss a possible Priips delay at its meeting on Monday.
A number of fund professionals hope the December 2016 introduction of the Priips – or ‘packaged retail and insurance-based investment products’ – regulation will be delayed because there has been a one-year extension for the implementation of ‘MiFID II’.
Earlier this year, implementation of MiFID II – the revised Markets in Financial Instruments Directive – and its accompanying regulation was delayed until January 2018, with transposition by member states of the directive into national regulations now due by July 2018.
MiFID II and Priips have overlapping requirements that have led to calls for synchronised implementations – and so there is some frustration with the currently two-speed adoption cycle.
Florian van Megan, retail markets specialist at The Investment Association, a UK fund management trade body, told Funds Europe: “The Priips delivery date has not even informally been set back. What our firms need is legal certainty and more time to implement once final rules are adopted.”
Van Megan was not talking specifically about the committee meeting this week, but another source, who did not want to be named, said it was thought the meeting did not cover Priips because the committee is working with Parliament on amendments to ‘regulatory technical standards’ (RTS) that would be used to implement the regulations.
The Priips RTS were rejected in September, a move welcomed by the funds industry and which is seen as making a Priips postponement as inevitable.
©2016 funds europe
