As the deadline to apply for a payment deferral ends on 31 March 2021, the FCA wants to reassure consumers in financial difficulty that support will continue to be available under the Tailored Support Guidance (TSG). Payment deferrals allowed firms to deal with unprecedented demand for short-term support very quickly. As the crisis evolves and demand for payments deferrals reduces, tailored support provides a longer-term framework for firms to offer a wider range of options which are tailored to a consumer’s individual needs and circumstances. The FCA has published finalised guidance for firms, to ensure that mortgage customers whose homes may be repossessed are treated fairly and appropriately, particularly where there are risks of harm to customers who are vulnerable, including as a result of coronavirus. Continue reading…

The European Securities and Markets Authority (ESMA), the EU’s securities markets regulator, has submitted its response to the European Commission’s (EC) targeted consultation on the European Single Access Point (ESAP). ESMA recommends a phased approach, which should prioritise financial and non-financial information of public companies. Steven Maijoor, Chair, said: “A single access point for information about companies is one of the key missing components of the Capital Markets Union. ESMA is fully supportive of the ambition to set up the ESAP as it will increase investor trust in companies across the EU and lower the costs of capital. ESMA is ready to take up a central role in setting up and running the ESAP as suggested by the CMU High Level Forum and the European Parliament.”

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The European Union Intellectual Property Office (EUIPO) and the European Union Agency for Criminal Justice Cooperation (Eurojust) are stepping up their cooperation to more effectively tackle criminal abuse of intellectual property rights in the field of counterfeiting and online piracy. A Service Level Agreement (SLA) was signed to boost Eurojust’s capacity and expand its expertise to support complex investigations in this field. As intellectual property (IP) crime is increasingly considered linked to organised crime and part of other serious criminal offences, it has become essential to intensify the fight against IP infringements, notably in the online environment. In the context of the COVID-19 pandemic, in which the problem of counterfeiting and piracy has gained new momentum with the illegal production and distribution of fake protective equipment and face masks, tackling IP crime is key to protect consumers and preserve a healthy economy and support the recovery of legitimate businesses, notably creative and innovative ones. Continue reading…

Pablo Hernández de Cos, Governor of the Bank of Spain and Chairman of the Basel Committee on Banking Supervision, recently gave a speech at the General Council of Economists on 4 February 2021. Third Deputy Prime Minister and Minister for Economic Affairs and Digital Transformation, ViceChair of the CNMV, Chair of the General Council of Economists: ladies and gentlemen, let me begin by thanking the General Economists Association for organising this event, which marks the conclusion of the Audiovisual Communication Competition on Financial Education. Let me congratulate, too, the winners, other finalists and participants for their effort, dedication and high-quality work. The competition, like most activities since the onset of the pandemic, has had to adapt to the extraordinary circumstances we are facing. Both organisers and contestants have shown high adaptability. The contestants have had to put all their creativity into a digital content. These circumstances also serve to emphasise how financial education can complement the development of other citizens’ capabilities, particularly those relating to digital skills. Continue reading…

Using the cross-system customer index from TOLERANT Software, companies can check in seconds whether they know a person making a request and in which systems data on this person might be stored. The customer index helps them to comply with their duty to provide information on data protection requests.  Continue reading…

The International Association of Insurance Supervisors (IAIS) has completed the first year of monitoring for the Insurance Capital Standard (ICS). The ICS aims to provide a globally comparable risk-based measure of capital adequacy of International Active Insurance Groups (IAIGs) and a common language to facilitate effective supervisory discussions of group solvency. The ultimate goal is a single ICS that includes a common methodology by which one ICS achieves comparable, ie substantially the same, outcomes across jurisdictions. The IAIS Executive Committee (ExCo) recently reviewed results from the 2020 ICS data collection and agreed to progress the 2021 ICS data collection with a small number of revisions to address issues that were identified through the data analysis and from the feedback received in the first year of the monitoring period. In June, the IAIS will publish the updated ICS specifications for the second year of the monitoring period. Continue reading…

Judicial and law enforcement authorities in Belgium, France and the Netherlands have in close cooperation enabled major interventions to block the further use of encrypted communications by large-scale organised crime groups (OCGs), with the support of Europol and Eurojust. The continuous monitoring of the illegal Sky ECC communication service tool by investigators in the three countries involved has provided invaluable insights into hundreds of millions of messages exchanged between criminals. This has resulted in the collection of crucial information on over a hundred of planned large-scale criminal operations, preventing potential life threatening situations and possible victims. Continue reading…

The European Banking Authority (EBA) recently published its Consumer Trends Report for 2020/2021. The Report identifies topical issues including irresponsible lending, creditworthiness assessments, and digitalisation, which the EBA has addressed, as well as others, such as selling practices and access to bank account, which it has recently started to work on. The Report also explains the measures the EBA has taken to mitigate the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on consumers. In this Report, the EBA observed that mortgages continue to have a big impact on consumers’ personal finances, representing 79% of loans to households. During the same period, the volume of consumer credit has increased by 14%, and that of deposits by 14.6%. In both mortgages and consumer credit, the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic has led to a heightened engagement between lenders and borrowers with a focus on the use of moratoria and government guarantees. The EBA has supported such initiatives, with the aim of supporting the short-term operational and liquidity challenges faced by borrowers. Continue reading…

by Dina-Perla Portnaar

Spiritual care delivery has proven beneficial to patients, families and front-line healthcare providers, especially in times of COVID-19. As the negative stressors continue to rise, the need for a compassionate and caring presence becomes all the more apparent. However, there is a lack of Chaplaincy representation at the highest organisational levels, which entails many risks. This is a global issue – in fact, in all sorts of institutions. For example, if we would do a search on ‘Chief Spiritual Officer’ via LinkedIn, not a whole lot of results would show up. ‘Chief Spiritual Officers: advocating for spiritual care leadership’ was the central theme of the digital round table / panel discussion on 25th February 2021. In other words, caring for the human spirit with integrity, grace and safety. We examined how best to define the Chief Spiritual Officer, the qualifications for assuming a spiritual leadership role and how this impacts advocating for spiritual care delivery in hospice and in other organisational structures. Continue reading…

The EU and U.S. recently agreed to suspend all retaliatory tariffs on EU and U.S. exports imposed in the Airbus and Boeing disputes for a four-month period. The suspension allows both sides to focus on resolving this long-running dispute. It provides an important boost to EU exporters, since the U.S. had been authorised to raise tariffs on $7.5 billion of EU exports to the U.S. Similarly, EU tariffs will be suspended on some $4 billion worth of U.S. exports into the EU.
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