We are pleased to be sponsoring The Association for Financial Markets in Europe’s (AFME) 3rd Annual Compliance and Legal Conference, “The future of regulation in a changing world”, which is taking place in Paris from 2-4 October. Our European financial services team will be participating in the event, including speaking on a panel discussion looking at expectations for MiFID II, covering market access, competition and consolidated tape, as well as the pressure points following MiFID…

The German Federal Financial Supervisory Authority (BaFin) will allow payment service providers domiciled in Germany to execute credit card payments online without strong customer authentication (SCA) as a temporary measure after 14 September 2019. Pursuant to a press release published on 21 August 2019, BaFin will not object to such transactions for the time being in order to prevent disruptions to online payment processes. Based on the second European Payments Services Directive (PSD2), starting from 14 September…

The German Federal Ministry of Finance (“BMF”) has prepared and circulated to certain interest groups a first draft bill on the national implementation of the Fifth Anti-Money Laundering Directive (Directive (EU) 2018/843 – “5MLD”). The draft bill provides for various changes to German regulatory acts such as the German Money Laundering Act (Geldwäschegesetz – “GwG”) or the German Banking Act (Kreditwesengesetz – “KWG”). These changes transpose into national law the rules set out in 5MLD,…

On 11 December 2018, the German Financial Supervisory Authority (BaFin) published its Guidance Notes on the German Money Laundering Act (Auslegungs- und Anwendungs­hinweise zum Geldwäschegesetz – Guidance Notes). I. Legal basis Pursuant to the German Money Laundering Act (GwG), BaFin has to provide obliged entities belonging to the financial sector with (regularly updated) interpretation and application notes for the implementation of the due diligence and internal safeguard measures to prevent money laundering. Within their scope of…

Subject to certain conditions set out in the AIFM- and UCITS-Directives, as transposed into domestic law, German fund management companies may outsource tasks to service providers. Such outsourcing is particularly relevant for the popular business model of the so-called “Master-KVG”-structure in Germany: Fully compliant with the prohibition of a letter box, the German fund management company offers risk management and administrative services under such structure, whereas portfolio management for the investment funds may be delegated…