Combating money laundering: Germany needs to catch up

The Financial Action Task Force (FATF), established by the G-7 and the European Commission, published its report on the state of anti-money laundering in Germany a few days ago.

We are happy to announce that we have completed and rolled-out the changes for EU PRIIPs RTS 2.0 for our cleversoft Standard OTC PRIIP service on the UAT / STG environment and it is available for you to consult and test.

To handle the UK PRIIPs regime and the latest amendments by the FCA related to this a new EPT v2.1 was published for consultation. The new EPT V2.1 is now under public consultation until the 19th of August 2022. The updated Template can be found on the FinDatEx website or HERE.

After the final approval of the European Parliament, the Commission Delegated Regulation (EU) 2022/1288 of 6 April 2022 supplementing Regulation (EU) 2019/2088 of the European Parliament and of the Council (“Delegated Regulation”) was published at the Official Journal of the European Union On 25 July.

The European Supervisory Authorities (ESAs) have recently published their first annual report on the voluntary disclosure of Principal Adverse Impact (PAI) under the SFDR. Findings and recommendations summarized in the report are based on a spring 2022 survey of national competent authorities (NCAs).

Did you already see the changes the updates from EIOPA supervision conference? We have prepared a short summary of the main message from the conference and the recent consultations on the regulatory updates that EIOPA published.

Last week, the EU reached an agreement on the proposed crypto-asset regulation "MiCA". The regulation is primarily aimed at improving investor protection and maintaining financial stability in relation to crypto-asset transactions. The subject of the legislative framework are issuers of unsecured crypto-assets and so-called "stablecoins", as well as the trading venues and wallets where crypto-assets are held.

After the American crypto lending platform Celsius recently suspended payouts to its users, ECB President Christine Lagarde is now calling for consequences.

As announced previously the EU Commission had proposed extending the delay to the new PRIIP RTS requirements to the end of the year, with a delayed application date starting on January 1st, 2023. While this date had been widely adopted by all market participants, it was not legislatively endorsed.

In June 2021, the jurisdiction of Malta was named as one of the newest additions of the FATF’s Increased Monitoring List, dubbed also as the ‘greylist’. 

The European ESG Template (EET) for the exchange of sustainability data was only recently presented, and the first deadline is already approaching.

The EBAs have recently published a joint report, which provides a comprehensive analysis of the completeness, adequacy, and uniformity of the applicable laws and practices on the withdrawal of licenses for serious breaches of the AML/CTF rules.

Did you already see the changes in 2.8 Taxonomy PWD2 published by EIOPA? We have analyzed the changes and prepared draft QRTs where you can see the new tables, including the possible list of values that can be populated for each field and a change log to taxonomy 2.6 EIOPA QRTs.

Luxembourg/Munich, 15th June 2022 - Munich-based cleversoft Group, RegTech provider for the financial services sector, announces 1 year after the acquisition of Luxembourg-based CDDS Group, that from 1 July 2022 both company divisions will operate jointly under the name cleversoft. The same applies to the Know-Your-Customer and Anti-Money Laundering solutions (now cleversoft AMLspotter and cleversoft BatchNameCheck).

Following the Q&A on Sustainable Finance Disclosure Regulation (SFDR) from May 25th, the ESAs published a week later a paper with Clarifications on the ESAs’ draft RTS under SFDR.

The European Commission published on May 25th, 2022 the answers to ESAs’ questions on the Sustainable Finance Disclosure Regulation ((EU) 2019/2088) (SFDR) and the Taxonomy Regulation ((EU) 2020/852). The paper covers details about topics such as PASI Statement, financial advisers and their recommendations of financial products, good governance practices for the investments of Art 8 and Art 9 products, and others.

On March 14, 2022, the European Committee on Economic and Monetary Affairs voted positively on the introduction of the Markets in Crypto Assets regulation (MiCA). Since then, it has been clear: The unified approval system for crypto assets is coming and will already come into force in parts towards the end of 2022.

On May 10th, the ESAs published a statement on the provision of the Key Information Document (KID) in terms of the PRIIP Regulation EU No 1286/2014. Please refer to our recent blog post for detailed explanations, in particular on the expectations from the European regulators on the section “What is this product “. The ESA´s statement affects all PRIIP stakeholders.

With the joint offering of leading RegTech Provider cleversoft and Avaloq, a global leader in digital banking solutions, financial institutions can seamlessly fulfill the extensive requirements of the EU Regulation 2019/2088 on Sustainable Finance Disclosure.

SAM Corporate is cleversoft group’s preferred partner for IFRS 17 implementations of SecondFloor eFrame® IFRS17 in the Middle East and Africa. Keep reading to find out how this strategic partnership can benefit you.

European Insurance and Occupational Pensions Authority (EIOPA) launched on April 13th, 2022 a public consultation on draft Guidelines on the integration of sustainability in the advice process under the IDD.

Did you already see the changes in 2.8 Taxonomy published by EIOPA? The initial public working draft and QRT amendments for next year's reporting are already known. For detailed information on the Draft ITS amendment for 2.8 and what to expect further based on the EIOPA roadmap, see the analysis in our blog post.

In light of Russia’s continuing war of aggression against Ukraine, and the reported atrocities committed by Russian armed forces in Ukraine, the Council decided today to impose a fifth package of economic and individual sanctions against Russia.

The European Commission has adopted the long-awaited regulatory technical standards (RTS) for the Sustainable Finance Disclosures Regulation (SFDR).

Now is the time to take the next step in our cooperation as a group, and so we have decided that SecondFloor will be renamed. Per April first, we will be named cleversoft supervisory reporting B.V

Sanctions implemented by the EU since the beginning of the crisis in Ukraine include the exclusion of certain Russian and Belarusian banks from the Swift banking messaging platform. However, these sanctions are not included in the EU list, although they are referenced by other sources of sanctions. Therefore, we have added a new list to our catalog for SWIFT exclusions. You want to know more about this new list and its use in our apps, read the blog post.

On March 25th, U.S. President Joe Biden and European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen announced that the U.S. and EU have reached an agreement in principle for a new Trans-Atlantic Data Privacy Framework.

Recently, the EBA published the findings of their assessment of competent authorities’ approaches to the AML/CFT supervision of banks. We’ve completed the initial work of putting together a summary of the relevant findings. Read the summary or reply to this email to learn more about these findings.

The ESAs (the three European Supervisory Authorities (EBA, EIOPA, and ESMA – ESAs)) have provided an update and clarification on their joint supervisory statement on the application of the Sustainable Finance Disclosure Regulation (SFDR). In our blog, we provide you with a summary overview of the statement.

Shortly after the proposal of the EU Commission above, regulatory movements in relation to the UK PRIIP regime have been made also by the FCA. Read our blog and find out more about the Policy Statement that had been published by the FCA on Friday, March 25th, and how it affects PRIIP manufacturers targeting retail clients in UK.

Following all of the regulatory updates from the EU Commission is a challenging task even for our regulatory watch group. In our latest newsletter regarding EU PRIIPs, we announced the official publication of the PRIIPs RTS 2.0 amendments in the Official Journal of the European Union.

Are you familiar with the latest Official version of the European ESG template (EET) and European MiFID Template (EMT V4)? You are wondering how can we generate the EET, while the SFDR and Taxonomy information will only be available in January 2023?

EIOPA has recently released the roadmap taxonomy planning for Solvency II along with the first working public draft of taxonomy 2.7. As expected, based on EIOPA workshop in January, the release dates for the next two taxonomies are communicated - taxonomy 2.7 the purpose of which is to integrate PEPP information into the Solvency II quantitative reporting templates and taxonomy 2.8 which is going to include the changes from Consultation on supervisory reporting and public disclosure that took place in 2019.

In line with the flexible procedures adopted in February 2021 to allow FATF to continue its monitoring program in light of the COVID-19 pandemic, the FATF has updated its statements for countries under review.

Following Russia's recognition of the self-proclaimed republics of Donetsk and Luhansk and the Russian military offensive against Ukraine, the European Union, the United States and the United Kingdom condemned Vladimir Putin's decision, defining the Russian offensive as a "flagrant violation of international law and the Minsk agreements." As a result, they began to implement a program of sanctions against Russia, its institutions and its leaders.

The MiFID “quick fix” was introduced by the European Commission in February 2021 as part of the Capital Markets Recovery Package with amendments due to applying from 28 February 2022.

We have constantly enlarged our global sanction lists catalog and Q1 2022 will show a drastic jump in the sanction’s coverage for the Middle East and Africa. Want to know more about new sanctions lists and how our AML solutions use them, read the Blog Post.

After public consultation, the Financial Data Exchange Templates group (FinDatEx) published the final version of the European PRIIP Template Version 2.0 on 08.02.2022.

The European Banking Authority (EBA) published a public consultation paper on the draft guidelines of remote customer onboarding solutions.

The European Banking Authority (EBA) published its final Guidelines setting out how prudential supervisors, anti-money laundering, and countering the financing of terrorism (AML/CFT) supervisors and financial intelligence units (FIUs) should cooperate and exchange information in relation to AML/CFT, in line with the Capital Requirements Directive (CRD).

The FinDatEx (Financial Data Exchange Templates) group launched the final version of the European ESG Template (EET) V1.0 on February 4th, 2022, which is now open for feedback until February 25th , 2022for the FinDatEx ESG group members. The current version of the template can be found here.

Before sharing our Service Roadmaps for 2022 with you, we want to take a moment to revisit docRepository achievements of 2021!

In December 2021, we informed you about the requirements out of the new guidelines of the European Securities and Markets Authority (ESMA). Next week, the new guidelines will come into force at the beginning of February 2022. You are welcome to read more details about the new guidelines in our blog.

ESMA published on January 27th, 2022, a consultation on guidelines on certain aspects of the MiFID II suitability requirements. Do you want to learn more about the highlights of the draft guidelines?

The Corruption Perception Index of Transparency International is a key element to build our country risks list. This list is used in our AML solutions to consider country risk in the enhanced due diligence of your monitored entities.

The Taxonomy Regulation (EU 2020/852) was adopted in June 2020 and went into effect on 1 June 2022. The Taxonomy Regulation establishes a classification system to identify whether an economic activity can be considered "environmentally sustainable."

The European Commission has published Q&As on the 2021 Capital Markets Union Package from November 25th, 2021, including the legislative proposal to review the Alternative Investment Fund Managers Directive (AIFMD) (Directive 2011/61/EU).

As we wrapped up 2021, we saw several important regulatory updates on the European, UK, and Swiss level that affect PRIIP manufacturers. The latest one is that the Commission Delegated Regulation (EU) 2021/2268 has been officially published to the Official Journal of the European Union on 20 December 2021. This completes the final step necessary for the complete legislation of the EU PRIIP KID regulatory technical standards amendments that were proposed in the past year.

On the 13th of December, EIOPA held Reporting and Disclosure ITS Amendments 2021 post public consultation. All proposals discussed by EIOPA are not yet final and might be subject to changes, however, they do give a clear indication of the direction that EIOPA is planning to take.

As announced on our previous blogpost in relation to the FinSA regulation, a decision of the Federal Council was expected in relation to the FinSA transition period.

The European Parliament recently approved an extension of the UCITS exemption, in addition to a six-month postponement of the PRIIPs Regulatory Technical Standards (RTS). As a result of the decision, all PRIIPs manufacturers — including asset managers, banking institutions, and insurance companies — will need to adopt the revised PRIIPs version by January 01st, 2023.

Now, you can automatically keep all the documents you need for suitability reports in one place — without the need for time-consuming manual download and upload.

The Final Draft SFDR RTS, published on October 22nd, 2021, introduces significant changes compared to the SFDR RTS from March. The main focus is on the template structures, taxonomy-alignment calculations and disclosures as a Do No Significant Harm assessment.

In 2020, the Federal Council set the goal of making Switzerland a leading location for sustainable financial services. Therefore, FINMA has set a strategic goal of contributing to the sustainable development of the Swiss financial center by focusing on two topics: climate risks and greenwashing.

The SFDR (EU 2019/2088) has been in effect since March 10, 2021, which allows Art. 20, Paragraphs 1 to 3 of SFDR, to go into effect starting January 1st, 2022.

On September 7th 2021, the European Commission (EC) adopted the revised Regulatory Technical Standards (RTS)11 with regards to the PRIIPs Key Information Document (KID) in all official languages. This delegated regulation has recently been agreed by the European Parliament's Committee on Economic and Monetary Affairs (ECON) and the Council of the European Union to extend the transitional period for the UCITS PRIIP KID requirement until the end of 2022.

There’s a new Managing Director at BusinessForensics, and she is ushering in an era of new energy and renewed dedication to customer success and innovation. On September 24th, Lisa van Bussel, with her well-rounded management, implementation, and consulting experience — in large part with BusinessForensics — was appointed Managing Director.

The European Parliament's Committee on Economic and Monetary Affairs (ECON) and the Council of the European Union have recently agreed to extend the transitional period for the UCITS PRIIP KID requirement until the end of 2021.

On November 3rd 2021, the FCA published a Discussion Paper on Sustainability Disclosure Requirements (SDR) and investment labels (DP21/4). The Discussion Paper sets FCA’s proposal on the following main initiatives...

At the start of this month, the FCA published an update to the proposed amendments for the UK PRIIPs regulation, originally planned to take effect on January 1st, 2022. To help keep you informed, we’ve prepared a detailed description of the FCA update, covering the information that’s important to you.

On October 1st, 2021, the Dutch market has officially opened for online bets. Earlier this year, the amended Dutch Betting and Gaming Act (Wet op Kansspelen) was published. This regulation, now in effect, gave online gaming service providers the opportunity to apply for a license at the Dutch Gaming Authority (Kansspelautoriteit, KSA).

The European Supervisory Authorities (ESAs) just published the final Regulatory Technical Standards — today — regarding the content and presentation of disclosures, pursuant to Article 8(4), 9(6) and 11(5) of the Sustainable Finance Disclosure Regulation (SFDR).

The release of the Pandora Papers has resurfaced an opportunity to take a closer look at the offshore industry. The Pandora Papers is among the most extensive global financial investigations. It brought together more than 600 journalists from 140 media organizations across 117 nations to pore over nearly 12 million leaked documents from 14 offshore services companies.

During implementation, we faced common challenges: processes needed to be changed, imports required adjustments, and the different teams needed to get to know one another. Throughout regular calls, questions were clarified, and information was exchanged. From there, we quickly began to see significant positive developments.

Following a number of prominent cases of alleged money laundering taking place at EU credit institutions, the European Commission concluded that reforms were necessary to be more effective and efficient in combatting money laundering and financing of terrorism (AML/CFT).

If you’re curious what we’ve been up to during the FinDatEx meetings, wonder no more! Today, we are sharing some of our early insights from the FinDatEx meetings, especially from the perspective of being an active, participating member in the EET standardization working group.

Our team is hard at work, continuing to make updates to the docRepository issuer connections!

The Swiss Financial Services Act (FinSA) entered into force in 2020 with a two-year transitory period. Providing FinSA KIDs to a retail customer will become mandatory in 2022. The provisions of the regulation apply whenever a financial service is offered in Switzerland, or to end-customers domiciled in Switzerland.

Earlier this year, we informed our clients when the European Supervisory Authorities (ESAs) submitted a draft Regulatory Technical Standards (RTS) to the EU Commission, combining regulatory technical standards developed under Articles 8(5) and 10(2) of Regulation (EU) No 1286/2014. Later on, we notified clients about the proposal of the EU Commission to amend Regulation (EU) No 1286/2014 to include an extension to July 01st, 2022.

The docRepository™ Microsite service is continuously evolving to improve usability and incorporate new features into our standard service.

On July 20th, 2021, the FCA published a Consultation Paper (CP21/23) on amending the UK PRIIPs regulation. In the Consultation Paper, the UK PRIIP regime — and the steps the UK is taking, post-Brexit, to amend the related legislations — is outlined.

Update – July 20, 2021: Looking for the latest updates to the Sustainable Finance Disclosure Regulation (SFDR) for your ESG reports? Look no further. At cleversoft, we help you — and our customers — stay on top of the latest regulatory updates, as they happen.

Luxembourg/Munich, July 06, 2021 – cleversoft group, the Munich-based RegTech provider for the financial services sector, together with software investor Main Capital, announces the 100% acquisition of CDDS Luxembourg S.A. and CDDS International S.A. (together “CDDS”), a software and data provider group, based in Luxembourg, that specializes in Know your Customer (KYC) and Anti-Money Laundering (AML) solutions.

As the deadline drew closer to the end of the six-month bridging period, provided under the EU-UK Trade and Cooperation Agreement, the European Commission adopted two adequacy decisions for the United Kingdom: One under the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) and the other for the Law Enforcement Directive on the processing of personal data for criminal offenses.

Great news! We just made another update to the issuer connections in docRepository™!

On June 7th, new Standard Contractual Clauses (SCCs), for the transfer of personal data to third countries, were published in the Official Journal of the European Union. My team and I are constantly monitoring the evolution of the Regulation EU 2016/679 (General Data Protection Regulation “GDPR”), and here’s what we’ve learned so far about the latest changes.

On June 1st the HM Treasury announced that UCITS Funds will be further exempted from the PRIIP Regulation until December 31st, 2026.

cleversoft ISAE 3402 audit report for 2020.

On March 10th, 2021, cleversoft’s ESG4insurance service went live with ESG (Environmental, Social and corporate Governance)/SFDR Transparency documentation for over 1300 investment funds. These investment funds are tied to unit-linked insurance policies that are now able to maintain compliance with new EU sustainability regulations, due to the implementation of the new ESG4insurance software. With this coverage, cleversoft takes the market lead, covering more than 50 percent of the insurance market for the DACH region.

In order to strengthen its services, Web Financial Group (WebFG) has entered into a strategic partnership with market-leading RegTech provider, cleversoft group GmbH.

cleversoft group, the Munich-based RegTech software provider for financial institutions and insurance companies, together with Software Investor Main Capital Partners announces the 100% acquisition of BusinessForensics B.V., a provider of financial and economic crime prevention solutions based in The Hague, Netherlands.

Swiss regulatory expert BRP Bizzozero & Partners SA, German financial services expert cleversoft GmbH and RegTech company Indigita SA have announced their collaboration to seamlessly integrate client, cross-border, and tax suitability checks for financial products with the provision of the respective regulatory documentation according to FinSA and PRIIPs. Through this unique offering, Financial institutions obtain all these checks and information from a single source covering all types of asset classes.

To ensure the increasing regulatory requirements of the supervisory authority and our customers in combination with the high standard of our service, we are expanding our partnerships with FE fundinfo and EDISOFT on the basis of our long standing working relationship.

Finnova integrates cleversoft's docRepository™ service in the Finnova Banking Software to serve banks regulatory need for pre-Trade compliance documents with access to cleversoft’s holistic solution via a standard interface. With this integration, Finnova not only responds to the regulatory requirements of the Financial Services Act (FinSA) but also to the industry's demands for further digitization of processes.

Helvetia now supports the focus on unit-linked life insurance products with the introduction of the new digital fund information cockpit FactsheetsLIVE™ from cleversoft. Looking back on a 160-year history of success, Helvetia continues to expand its leading position in the market with enhanced digital sales support for life insurance companies.

cleversoft group, the Munich based RegTech provider for Financial Services, acquired SecondFloor, an Amsterdam based specialist of risk and regulatory reporting solutions for Solvency II, IFRS 17, FTK, IORP II and others.

cleversoft has received a substantial investment from software investor Main Capital to capitalize on the growing RegTech Challenge for the financial services market. cleversoft looks to grow product and regulatory scope organic and inorganic with the added expertise and additional capital from Main Capital.

cleversoft, the leading provider of cloud-based PRIIP and RegTech content solutions, has added fundinfo’s fund documents to its regulatory document service in the global Refinitiv Wealth Management terminal EIKON. Refinitiv is formerly the Financial and Risk business of Thomson Reuters.

After four months of PRIIP and MiFID II regulation in addition to German PIB regulation are reality. Cleversoft has established itself successfully as leading service provider for these topics in the DACH market. We want to share our experiences and discuss challenges with you.

cleversoft has successfully completed its yearly controls audit. Once again cleversoft is demonstrating its commitment to highest compliance and transparency standards for its customers.

Florian Clever explains how innovative RegTech cloud-based solutions can help financial institutions cope with new regulation.