Since Autumn 2024, the Austrian Financial Market Authority (FMA) has published an information series for supervised entities called “Let’s talk about supervision” (German: “Reden wir über Aufsicht”). It addresses current practically relevant supervision topics clearly and concisely, in a way that is also comprehensible for non-legal professionals. It focuses on new areas of supervision and thematic areas where a need for further explanation has been identified. The FMA’s intention behind “Let’s talk about supervision” is the simplification of implementing or fulfilling of legal standards.
Issue 06 – ICT service providers: obtaining an overview from the DORA Register of Information (March 2025)
The resilience of ICT third-party service providers is decisive for the financial sector’s operational resilience. New dependencies and risks, such as concentration risks arise from them. This is why it is important to have an overview. The Register of Information creates such an overview under DORA, by containing a list of all contracts with ICT third-party service providers.
Reden wir über Aufsicht - DORA Informationsregister (Format: pdf, Size: 184,1 KB, Language: German)
Issue 05 – ICT risk management under DORA. Experiences from supervisory practice (February 2025)
Under DORA, ICT risk management plays a key role for controlling ICT security measures. If there are shortcomings in the process, or if risk management is not afforded due consideration when purchasing security solutions or when introducing security measures, there is a risk of inefficiencies and misinvestments. This is a risk that is examined in the on-site inspections conducted by the FMA.
Issue 04 – ESG Funds Names: What’s in a name? (January 2025)
Guidelines have applied for investment funds since 21 November 2024 whose names contain ESG or sustainability-related terms in their names. These Guidelines state that where such terms are used, at least 80% of the investments are required to meet the necessary investment objectives. Funds with ESG-related names will be excluded from making certain types of investments in the future.
Reden wir über Aufsicht - ESG-Fondsnamen (Format: pdf, Size: 218,1 KB, Language: German)
Issue 03 – Identification in non-face-to-face operations (December 2024)
Technological developments are changing the framework conditions in preventing money laundering. This is the case, for example, when transactions are concluded online. The unambiguous and secure identification of customers – within the know your customer (KYC) procedure – constitutes a key measure for the prevention of money laundering and terrorist financing.
Issue 02 – Group of connected clients (October 2024)
The objective of the provisions in the Capital Requirements Regulations (CRR) for limiting large exposures is to limit the loss potential of a credit institution regard its individual exposures. For these provisions to also apply for clients that are separate entities, but which have dependency relationships with one another, in certain cases they are required to be grouped into risk units.
Issue 01 – Outsourcing of core services by CASPs (August 2024)
In many aspects, the EU Regulation on Markets in Crypto Assets (MiCAR) uses a system modelled on existing capital market regulations, however in some areas uses other approaches, because the legislator has taken the functioning of distributed ledger technology and the crypto assets based on it into account. In particular, this affects outsourcing provisions for crypto-asset service providers (CASPs).
Please note all publications in this series are currently only available in German.