Speech by Christopher Woolard, Executive Director of Strategy and Competition at the FCA, delivered at the Anti-Money Laundering TechSprint, London: “The FCA’s own financial crime survey, in which firms submitted a year’s worth of data, showed that employees at all levels raised over 920,000 internal suspicious activity reports to their money laundering reporting officers. Meanwhile, more than 1.1m prospective customers were refused services amid financial crime concerns. This isn’t just a compliance issue, it’s a human one.”

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During the Biannual high-level networking seminar on economic and financial issues, organised by Danmarks Nationalbank, Copenhagen, Ms Sabine Lautenschläger, Member of the Executive Board of the European Central Bank and Vice-Chair of the Supervisory Board of the European Central Bank gave an interesting speech. You can read it on oue website.

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Speech by Mr Agustín Carstens, General Manager of the BIS, at the Sveriges Riksbank’s 350th anniversary conference on “350 years of central banking: the past, the present and the future.” The Riksbank’s journey from public savings bank to modern central bank epitomises the central bank as an adaptive, learning and improving organisation. Often crisis spurs adaptation, as it did in 2008. The Riksbank’s evolution points to broad trends in central banking towards fiat money, public governance, centralised payments and a lender of last resort role. Mr Agustín Carstens: “I submit that these trends will persist”.
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Today, the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) becomes fully applicable to all companies and organisations operating within the EU. The European Data Protection Supervisor welcomes the news that the EU legislator has now reached a political agreement on equivalent rules on data protection in the EU institutions and bodies and they will continue to support the EU institutions to ensure that they are ready to implement these rules from day one, the European Data Protection Supervisor (EDPS) said today.

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By Abigail Myers-Antiaye, Global Country Compliance Manager at Tungsten Network

As you may know, the Italian government is on the verge of making all B2B e-invoicing mandatory in an attempt to close its VAT gap. This decision could recover billions but also violates several terms of the EU VAT Directive, potentially pushing the EU to shift its policies. In addition, the Italian Government’s initiative could see a domino effect across Europe as other EU members follow suit.

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The European Banking Authority (EBA) launched two consultations on draft regulatory technical standards (RTS) specifying an economic downturn and on a set of Guidelines related to the estimation of loss given default (LGD) appropriate for conditions of an economic downturn. The draft RTS specify the nature, severity and duration of an economic downturn, while the Guidelines focus on the appropriate estimation of the LGD in a situation of economic downturn. This package is part of the EBA’s broader work on the review of the IRB approach aiming at reducing the unjustified variability in the outcomes of internal models, while preserving the risk sensitivity of capital requirements. The consultations run until 22 June 2018.
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The Basel Committee on Banking Supervision issued the Capital treatment for simple, transparent and comparable short-term securitisations. This standard supplements the Criteria for identifying simple, transparent and comparable short-term securitisations issued jointly with the International Organization of Securities Commissions (IOSCO).
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The Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) is consulting on new guidance outlining factors financial services firms should consider under the Consumer Rights Act 2015 (CRA) when drafting and reviewing variation terms in their consumer contracts. The CRA implements Council Directive 93/13/ECC on unfair terms in consumer contracts (the Directive).  
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In her speech, Anneli Tuominen, Director General of Finland’s Financial Supervisory Authority and member of the Supervisory Board of the European Central Bank, talks about the role national supervisors play in the European system, Nordea’s move to join the banks supervised by the ECB and tighter rules for mortgage loans in Finland. The largest Nordic bank, Nordea, recently decided to relocate its headquarters from Stockholm to Helsinki to be supervised under the umbrella of the Single Supervisory Mechanism (SSM). What does this mean for the SSM?
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The dispersion of prices between Member States of the European Union (EU) is a popular indicator of the economic integration of the internal market. Car prices in the EU converged from the 1990s until the year 2003, after which this development ceased. The remaining price dispersion between countries is systematically linked to product features, reflecting manufacturer pricing-to-market.

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