29 August 2018

Steven Maijoor addresses ECON committee on securitisation

 I would like to underline that the overarching principle that has guided ESMA’s policy work on securitisation is to ensure a high level of transparency and investor protection and at the same time limit, to the extent possible, any additional regulatory burden on parties to the securitisation transaction. The need to ensure a high level of transparency is one of the important lessons of the financial crisis and the performance of securitisations under stressed conditions. In my view, the increased transparency of the securitisation market and cross-sectoral consistency of regulatory requirements will further improve confidence in the securitisation market, enhance the investor base for securitisation transactions and ultimately boost the financing of the real economy.

One issue ESMA faced when developing these disclosure templates was how to treat public and private securitisations. In the end, following a careful reading of ESMA’s mandates, we believe that there are some aspects of these standards that are also aimed at private deals, and this is reflected in the technical standards.

As a reminder the Securitisation Regulation introduced some amendments to EMIR, which include two joint mandates to the European Supervisory Authorities (ESAs). The two mandates relate to the clearing obligation and the risk mitigation techniques for non-centrally cleared OTC derivatives. The consultation by the ESAs closed in June and the ESAs have since been working together in order to finalise the related draft technical standards swiftly.

Finally, capitalising on ESMA’s existing supervisory expertise, ESMA will follow the mandate initially proposed by this Committee and implement an effective supervisory framework for the securitisation repositories. Having said that, I would like to draw your attention to the insufficient resource allocation in the 2019 budget proposal by the European Commission. As the budgetary process for the next year is still ongoing, I would very much hope that the European Parliament will support ESMA’s corresponding resource request and so allow ESMA to deliver successfully and on time, on this important task under the Securitisation Regulation.

Full speech

© ESMA