ESMA Revises Guidelines for Reporting by Credit Rating Agencies
ESMA revised the guidelines on the information that credit rating agencies (CRAs) must report for supervisory purposes. These guidelines follow a public consultation in July 2018, post which a number of refinements have been introduced in areas such as cost and revenue reporting, “as soon as” notifications, and reporting calendars. ESMA will make all relevant reporting templates available sufficiently in advance of the implementation date to allow for a period of testing between ESMA and CRAs. The guidelines will become effective two months after their publication on ESMA’s website in all of the official languages.
In March 2015, ESMA had published its first set of guidelines on the periodic information that CRAs should submit to ESMA for the ongoing supervision. Since the introduction of the guidelines in 2015, the supervisory processes of ESMA have evolved and the timing, frequency, and format of the information submitted in accordance with the 2015 guidelines is no longer capable of supporting these supervisory processes efficiently and effectively. Therefore, these revised guidelines amend some sections of the 2015 guidelines on the reporting of periodic information to ensure they continue to efficiently and effectively support the supervisory processes of ESMA. The main goal of the guidelines is to streamline the information that is reported on a periodic basis by CRAs to ESMA, ensuring that the information is fully aligned with ESMA’s supervisory processes. Additionally, a secondary goal of the guidelines is to increase the predictability of ESMA’s supervisory interactions with CRAs, with respect to the requests for information that ESMA submits to CRAs. The following are the main features of the revised guidelines:
- Differentiated reporting calendars for entities, depending on required level of supervisory engagement
- Individual reporting instructions (for each reporting item), which have been elaborated and expanded in areas where ESMA has identified a supervisory need
- Standardizing reporting templates for specific reporting items
After considering the feedback received during the consultation process, ESMA intends to maintain the proposed implementation date of July 31, 2019. However, ESMA made a number of changes throughout the guidelines to clarify or reduce the amount of information that should be provided under different reporting items and reporting templates. In addition, ESMA has rescheduled the submission deadlines of a number of items from July 31 to January, thus reducing the initial reporting burden of July 31. In addition, ESMA can clarify that given the Revenues and Costs Item has a reporting deadline that precedes the implementation date of the guidelines, the first submission date for this item under the revised guidelines will be May 31, 2020.
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Keywords: Europe, EU, Banking, Insurance, Securities, CRA, Reporting, Guidelines, Proportionality, ESMA
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