Regulatory Updates 2026

Key dates

2026-11-03

The EAER expanded and amended the Swiss sanctions lists relating to Russia and Belarus.

2026-11-04

The Federal Council decided to adopt the EU’s 21st Russia and Belarus sanctions package and related measures.

2026-11-04

The amended sanctions lists entered into force at 23:00 Swiss time.

2026-11-05

The sectoral measures, including the strengthened crypto-sector restrictions and transaction prohibitions, entered into force.

Suggested considerations

• Compliance teams may wish to refresh sanctions screening against the amended Swiss Russia and Belarus lists, including customer, beneficial-owner, authorised-signatory, counterparty and payment screening records.
• Swiss crypto-sector companies should consider reviewing ownership registers, pending acquisitions, shareholder changes, control arrangements and beneficial-ownership information for Russian nationals and persons resident in Russia, including indirect acquisition structures.
• Firms should consider mapping exposure to the newly prohibited banks, financial institutions, crypto-service providers and other entities, and placing appropriate holds on affected transactions and assets pending resolution.
• Financial intermediaries may wish to document asset-freeze decisions and report affected business relationships to SECO in accordance with the applicable Ukraine sanctions ordinance.
• Where sanctions-related facts create suspicion of money laundering or terrorist financing, firms should consider completing the additional clarifications required by Article 6 AMLA and filing an immediate report under Article 9 AMLA if the suspicion cannot be dispelled.
• Firms may wish to update sanctions procedures, transaction-monitoring scenarios, onboarding questionnaires and escalation controls to distinguish SECO sanctions reporting from separate AMLA reporting.
• Compliance teams may wish to review external exposure to EU sanctions controls as well as Swiss measures; independent Swiss sanctions commentary describes the regime as not being a general Russia or Belarus embargo, but highlights continuing expansion of financial, crypto, services and circumvention controls.

What changed

The EAER expanded and amended the Russia and Belarus sanctions lists, adding 254 individuals, companies and organisations to measures including asset freezes and restrictions on making funds or economic resources available. Switzerland also introduced transaction prohibitions covering, among others, 33 Russian banks, one bank in a third country, 17 financial institutions and crypto-service providers, five third-country companies, four Russian airports and two Russian ports.

Key dates

2016-07-01

Beginning of the period during which Sunshine Loans entered into contracts containing the unlawful amendment fee.

2019-03-13

Relevant fee contraventions became civil penalty provisions; civil penalties were available only for contraventions from this date.

2020-11-01

Sunshine Loans ceased charging the amendment or rescheduling fee shortly after ASIC intervention.

2022-06-01

ASIC commenced Federal Court civil penalty proceedings against Sunshine Loans.

2024-04-12

The Federal Court found that Sunshine Loans had contravened the National Credit Code by imposing, charging and accepting the prohibited fee.

2025-03-24

The Full Federal Court dismissed Sunshine Loans' liability appeal and determined the relevant appeals in ASIC's favour.

2026-03-18

The High Court unanimously dismissed Sunshine Loans' appeal concerning the recusal issue, allowing the penalty matter to return to the Federal Court.

2026-11-06

The Federal Court ordered Sunshine Loans to pay a $5.5 million civil penalty and ASIC's costs.

Suggested considerations

• Compliance teams may wish to inventory every fee and charge applied to small amount credit contracts and map each one to an expressly permitted category under the National Credit Code.
• Lenders should consider testing repayment-date changes, hardship arrangements, restructures and other contract variations to confirm that fees are not imposed when a consumer is not in default.
• Firms should consider conducting a historical review of fee configuration, customer communications, contract templates, payment records and general ledger data to identify comparable conduct and quantify affected consumers.
• Where potentially unlawful fees are identified, firms should consider stopping the relevant charging logic, preserving records, assessing remediation and notifying relevant governance bodies and regulators where appropriate.
• Credit licensees may wish to strengthen legal review and compliance sign-off for product terms and fee changes, including documented evidence supporting the legality of each fee.
• Boards and senior management should consider whether compliance monitoring adequately tests fee restrictions for products used by financially vulnerable consumers and whether identified issues are escalated promptly.
• Firms should consider reviewing whether their dispute-resolution and remediation processes enable affected consumers to obtain redress through internal complaints handling and the Australian Financial Complaints Authority.

What changed

This is an enforcement outcome rather than a new legislative rule. The Court confirmed that small amount credit contract providers may impose only the fee categories permitted by the National Credit Code: an establishment fee, a monthly fee, a fee payable on default, or a government fee, charge or duty. A $35 fee for rescheduling a repayment where the consumer was not in default did not fall within those categories.

Key dates

2026-11-06

EBA publishes its policy statement on the post-consultation direction of the supervisory reporting simplification package.

2026-12-01

EBA is expected to publish the final report on the draft ITS package; the precise publication date was not specified.

2026-12-31

EBA expects to publish guidance on designing and making supervisory and resolution data requests by the end of 2026; the precise date was not specified.

2027-01-01

Firms should take into account the EBA consideration on application of the FRTB from this date during the transition.

2027-01-01

The EU-wide public repository of supervisory and resolution data requests is expected to become operational during Q1 2027; the precise date was not specified.

2027-06-30

The EBA expects to present further proposals on reporting change management in the first half of 2027; the precise date was not specified.

2027-12-01 Deadline

First reference date for the new supervisory reporting requirements, subject to finalisation, Commission adoption and the precise legal text; the announcement specifies December 2027 but not a day.

2028-12-01 Deadline

Expected reference period for deferred liquidity, asset-encumbrance, supervisory-benchmarking and ESG reporting changes; the announcement specifies December 2028 but not a day.

Suggested considerations

• Firms should continue submitting currently applicable supervisory reporting templates until the revised ITS and technical package are legally adopted and applicable, rather than treating the announced simplifications as immediately effective.
• Compliance and regulatory-reporting teams may wish to preserve existing reporting processes for operational-risk losses while removing or suppressing only data affected by the new granular operational-risk taxonomy, consistently with transition instructions.
• Institutions participating in credit-risk or IFRS 9 benchmarking should continue using the 2026 ITS on supervisory benchmarking reporting during the transition and confirm whether they remain within the relevant benchmarking population.
• Firms should assess the impact of the 1 January 2027 FRTB implementation position on reporting, capital, data lineage and systems, including whether existing interpretations need to be revised once the EBA consideration is final.
• Reporting owners should maintain separate implementation workstreams for requirements expected from December 2027 and deferred areas expected from December 2028, including liquidity, asset encumbrance, benchmarking and ESG reporting.
• Firms should monitor the EBA final ITS report in December 2026, the Commission adoption process and the technical package expected in early 2027, including the data point model, taxonomies and validation rules.
• Institutions may wish to inventory national and supervisory data requests and identify duplicative submissions in anticipation of the EBA data-request guidance and EU-wide repository.
• Change-management plans should account for possible revisions to templates, frequencies, thresholds, validation rules, reporting ownership and consolidated-level data aggregation once the final technical package is available.

What changed

The final package, scheduled for publication in December 2026, will further simplify reporting templates, reduce collateral, stress-testing and ESG data, remove selected reporting thresholds, reduce reporting frequencies and align reporting more closely with disclosure requirements. Credit-risk and IFRS 9 benchmarking reporting will be integrated into the supervisory reporting framework, with streamlined IFRS 9 requirements and greater emphasis on consolidated-level reporting.

Key dates

2024-06-30

MiCAR provisions concerning asset-referenced tokens and e-money tokens became applicable.

2024-12-30

Most remaining MiCAR provisions, including the principal Title II framework for offers and admissions to trading of other crypto-assets and Title V CASP requirements, became applicable.

2026-11-06

The AFM published its warning and reminder concerning public crypto-asset offerings, memecoins, white papers and marketing communications.

Suggested considerations

• Compliance teams may wish to identify every token launched, distributed or promoted to EU users and document whether the activity is an issuance, public offer, admission to trading or a crypto-asset service under MiCAR.
• Firms should consider confirming that the issuer is a legal person and recording the basis on which any MiCAR exemption is relied upon, including the relevant investor-count or EUR 1,000,000 12-month threshold where applicable.
• Before marketing or distribution, firms should consider preparing, notifying and publishing the required MiCAR white paper and ensuring that its content follows the applicable regulatory technical standards and AFM submission expectations.
• Marketing, influencer activity, website content and social-media posts should be reviewed for fair, clear and non-misleading presentation, clear advertising identification, balanced risk disclosure and consistency with the white paper.
• Firms should consider retaining approval records, versions of promotional content, influencer instructions, audience and jurisdiction controls, and evidence supporting any exemption or risk classification.
• Trading platforms and CASPs may wish to assess onboarding and listing controls for tokens whose issuer, white paper, promotional claims or market-abuse risk indicators are unclear.
• Compliance teams should consider escalation procedures for exaggerated profit claims, undisclosed paid promotion, misleading statements about token utility or supply, and conduct suggesting fraud or market manipulation.
• Firms should consider checking whether the token is instead a financial instrument or an asset-referenced token or e-money token, in which case MiFID II or MiCAR Titles III or IV and their associated authorisation requirements may apply rather than, or in addition to, the ordinary Title II analysis.

What changed

The publication does not introduce a new regulation or effective date; it restates and foregrounds existing obligations under Regulation (EU) 2023/1114 on markets in crypto-assets (MiCAR). Under MiCAR Title II, a person intending to make a public offer of a crypto-asset other than an asset-referenced token or e-money token, or seeking its admission to trading, generally must be a legal person, draw up a crypto-asset white paper, notify it to the competent authority and publish it.

Key dates

2025-06-12

The SFC launched the consultation on expanding section 34 of the SFO and introducing similar restrictions under the AMLO.

2025-08-11

The consultation period closed; the SFC reported receiving nine submissions from industry associations, professional bodies, a bank and other interested parties.

2026-11-06

The SFC published its consultation conclusions, updated the FAQs and announced its intention to introduce an amendment bill into LegCo.

Suggested considerations

• Compliance teams may wish to inventory legal-entity names, business names, brands, websites, domains, mobile applications, social-media handles, product names and marketing descriptions against the SFC's proposed Table A and Table B titles.
• Firms should consider mapping each relevant name to the activities actually performed, including trading, brokerage, matching, exchange, clearing, settlement, custody and virtual-asset services, and documenting whether SFO or AMLO licensing could be required.
• Unregulated entities may wish to assess whether current names imply SFC licensing, regulated status or an association with a well-known exchange, clearing house or VATP, including through abbreviations, translated names and closely resembling wording.
• Licensed VATPs and financial groups may wish to review whether group-company names, partnerships, white-label arrangements, sponsorships or marketing references could create an apparent association with an established operation that does not exist.
• Legal and compliance functions may wish to monitor the amendment bill, LegCo proceedings, commencement provisions, transitional arrangements, the final restricted-title list and any future mechanism for updating that list.
• Firms considering a new name or business launch may wish to obtain independent Hong Kong legal advice and, where appropriate, seek SFC authorisation before adopting a potentially restricted title; the SFC has not announced a final application deadline or commencement date.
• Marketing and financial-promotion controls may be updated to require enhanced review of terms such as "exchange", "trading platform", "clearing house", "virtual asset", "digital asset", "token" and "crypto" once the amendments are enacted.

What changed

The SFC will proceed with legislative amendments to expand the existing section 34 SFO restrictions beyond titles such as "stock exchange" and "commodity exchange". The expanded scope is intended to cover titles commonly used instead of "exchange", titles describing SFO-regulated products, titles referring specifically to clearing operations, and names or acronyms implying association with established or well-known exchanges, clearing houses, VATPs or similar operations, whether located in Hong Kong or elsewhere and whether regulated or unregulated.

Key dates

2026-11-06

The final rule was published in the Federal Register at 91 FR 69955.

2027-02-04

Amendments to Investment Company Act rule 0-10 and Advisers Act rule 0-7 become effective.

2027-02-04 Deadline

The amendments to Advisers Act rule 203-3(b) and Form ADV become effective and compliance is required.

Suggested considerations

• Compliance teams may wish to assess whether the adviser or any relevant control group will qualify as a small entity under the revised less-than-$1 billion RAUM test once the amendments become effective.
• Advisers may wish to review Form ADV Item 12 procedures, reporting logic, and filing controls so that the revised definition is applied from the February 4, 2027 compliance date.
• Advisers and fund groups may wish to map control relationships and family-of-investment-companies aggregation methodology against the amended thresholds rather than treating each legal entity independently.
• Firms may wish to confirm that internal policies do not incorrectly treat the revised RFA thresholds as changes to SEC registration, exemption, fiduciary, reporting, custody, or other substantive obligations.
• Advisers relying on or considering a continuing hardship exemption may wish to review the conforming amendments to Advisers Act rule 203-3(b) and update related filing documentation.
• Regulatory-change inventories and future rulemaking impact assessments may benefit from recording the inflation-adjustment mechanism and monitoring subsequent Commission adjustment orders.

What changed

Effective February 4, 2027, rule 0-10 will increase the threshold for a registered investment company or business development company to qualify as a small entity from $50 million to $10 billion of net assets. Asset aggregation will use the Form N-CEN concept of a family of investment companies rather than the former group of related investment companies terminology.

Key dates

2026-11-05

CFTC issued the interpretation of the impartial access requirements in 17 CFR 38.151(b).

2026-12-05 Deadline

Thirty-day period expires for DCMs to cease domestic geographic restrictions that violate the impartial-access requirements or submit an explanation to the Division of Market Oversight why compliance is not feasible; the same period applies to addressing intermediary impediments or explaining why compliance is not feasible.

Suggested considerations

• DCMs should inventory all domestic geographic eligibility, onboarding, trading, product-access, and account-management restrictions and assess them against 17 CFR 38.151(b)'s requirements for impartial, transparent, and non-discriminatory access.
• DCMs should review whether state-based restrictions affect members, persons with trading privileges, independent software vendors, or access to particular products, including event contracts.
• DCMs should identify and review contractual, technical, and operational controls used by futures commission merchants, introducing brokers, and other intermediaries to determine whether they impose geographic restrictions inconsistent with the DCM's impartial-access requirements.
• DCMs should document the legal and operational basis for removing each restriction or, where removal is not feasible, prepare a fact-specific explanation for the Division of Market Oversight before the 30-day period expires.
• Compliance teams at intermediaries should map state-based geofencing, customer-location verification, product blocking, and position-management restrictions affecting access to DCM markets and assess whether those controls are required by applicable law, regulation, or court order.
• Affected firms should assess conflicts between the CFTC's interpretation and any state requirements or judicial orders, obtain legal analysis, and avoid treating the interpretation as automatically vacating an injunction or other binding court order.
• DCMs should retain evidence of governance review, intermediary oversight, customer communications, access testing, and remediation decisions in anticipation of possible fact-specific CFTC inquiry or enforcement.

What changed

The CFTC has applied the existing impartial-access requirements in 17 CFR 38.151(b) expressly to domestic geographic restrictions, including restrictions based on a market participant's state or location. DCMs must cease geographic restrictions that violate the rule within 30 days of the November 5, 2026 publication, or submit an explanation to the Division of Market Oversight stating why compliance is not feasible.

Key dates

2026-11-05

CFTC Division of Clearing and Risk issued the no-action letter and accompanying public release addressing trust companies used for daily settlements.

Suggested considerations

• Compliance teams may wish to identify any existing or proposed trust-company settlement arrangements and determine whether each arrangement is being governed under the DCO’s settlement-bank policies and procedures.
• DCOs should consider documenting that each trust company satisfies the applicable 17 CFR 39.14 settlement-bank criteria, including capitalization, creditworthiness, liquidity access, operational reliability, and regulatory status.
• Firms should consider reviewing account structures, settlement agreements, payment workflows, and legal opinions to confirm that transfers are irrevocable and unconditional no later than the time the relevant DCO or clearing-member account is debited or credited.
• DCOs may wish to assess credit, liquidity, concentration, and intraday settlement exposures arising from the use of each trust company and confirm that monitoring, escalation, collateral, and contingency arrangements remain adequate.
• Operations and resilience teams may wish to test the trust company’s connectivity, payment-failure procedures, recovery arrangements, and coordination with the DCO’s business-continuity and disaster-recovery plans.
• Legal and compliance teams should consider recording the no-action letter’s conditions and limits in the DCO’s regulatory inventory, noting that the relief is staff relief rather than a binding amendment to Part 39 and may not extend to materially different structures or facts.
• Clearing members may wish to confirm that their agreements with the DCO and trust company allocate settlement, segregation, insolvency, operational, and account-control risks consistently with the DCO’s approved procedures.

What changed

The letter provides staff no-action relief for a DCO that uses a trust company to conduct daily settlement, notwithstanding the distinction between a trust company and a settlement bank under the CFTC framework. It does not create a generally applicable exemption or amend 17 CFR Part 39; instead, it allows the arrangement provided the trust company is managed and controlled as a settlement bank.

Key dates

2026-11-02

The FCA published an earlier statement warning about demands for repayment of disguised-remuneration scheme loans, the possible need for a Validation Order and undue pressure in debt collection.

2026-11-05

The FCA published the intervention and the restrictions agreed with Ethica Resolve Limited and West 28th Street Limited.

Suggested considerations

• Firms servicing or collecting historic disguised-remuneration loans should identify affected portfolios, pause demands and litigation activity falling within the FCA restrictions, and confirm the precise scope of any agreed requirements with the FCA.
• Ethica should complete and evidence the required consumer communications, including the explanation that payment is not currently enforceable, and maintain records of recipients, delivery attempts and unresolved cases.
• Compliance teams should review whether correspondence, telephone contact, default notices, letters of claim and court instructions could create undue pressure or inaccurately imply that immediate payment is legally required.
• Firms should establish a vulnerability-identification and support process covering consumers experiencing health, financial or comprehension difficulties, with appropriate escalation, reasonable adjustments and management information.
• Debt servicers should verify the creditor's ownership, the chain of assignment, the original lender's regulatory status and any applicable consumer-credit permissions or exemptions before pursuing repayment.
• Legal and compliance teams should assess whether any proposed enforcement requires an FCA Validation Order or other court permission, recognising that a Validation Order is not guaranteed and that the FCA has stated that the debt may remain unenforceable if required permission is not granted.
• Firms should ensure that no default judgment is sought in the affected claims and that consumers continue to receive accurate information that formal court documents should not be ignored.
• Senior management should review outsourcing, agency and oversight arrangements where an authorised firm acts for an unauthorised debt purchaser, including conduct risk, consumer-outcome monitoring and escalation to the FCA where harm may have occurred.

What changed

Ethica must write to affected consumers explaining that they do not currently have an enforceable obligation to pay and therefore do not need to make payment at this stage. Ethica must not make further demands for payment from affected consumers in the current proposed court claim while the relevant issues remain unresolved. Ethica and West 28 must not seek default judgments against consumers who have not responded to a legal claim. Ethica must identify affected vulnerable consumers and put additional protections in place.

Key dates

2024-07-09

Directive (EU) 2024/1619 (CRD VI) entered into force, introducing or strengthening governance requirements including responsibility mapping and a dedicated framework for third-country branches.

2025-01-01

The CRD VI banking package began applying according to the EBA consultation materials, with the revised Guidelines intended to support implementation of the updated framework.

2026-11-05

The EBA published the final revised Guidelines and the final report on internal governance.

Suggested considerations

• Compliance teams may wish to identify the competent authority’s expected adoption or comply-or-explain treatment once the final Guidelines are translated and formally notified, because no application date is specified in the published final report.
• Firms should consider performing a gap assessment against the final provisions on management-body responsibilities, senior-management and key-function-holder role statements, responsibility mappings, reporting lines, organisational structures and internal-control arrangements.
• Institutions may wish to review board and committee terms of reference, chair and executive-role combinations, conflict-of-interest registers, recusal controls and escalation procedures against the clarified expectations.
• Third-country-branch operators should consider mapping the new branch-specific governance requirements to the local branch manager, head-office governance, risk management, internal control, oversight and reporting arrangements, using the proportionality available in the final text.
• Firms should consider checking consistency between internal-governance documentation and DORA-related ICT risk, operational resilience, business-continuity and third-party-risk arrangements.
• Groups may wish to determine which entities fall within the Guidelines and whether responsibility mappings should be maintained at entity, branch and group levels, documenting the rationale for the chosen scope.
• Compliance teams may wish to retain evidence of proportionality assessments based on size, nature, scale and complexity, rather than removing governance controls solely because the final Guidelines are less granular than the consultation draft.
• Firms should monitor publication of the final Guidelines in all EU official languages and subsequent national competent-authority communications before setting internal implementation deadlines.

What changed

The Guidelines clarify the responsibilities of the management body, senior management and key function holders, including documented statements of roles and duties and a mapping of responsibilities. They address organisational structures, management of conflicts of interest—including situations where the chair also has executive functions—and key elements of internal control frameworks. They introduce or clarify governance expectations for third-country branches under CRD VI, with greater proportionality than in the consultation draft.

Key dates

2026-11-04

MPC meeting ended and the committee voted 8–1 to increase Bank Rate by 0.25 percentage points to 4%; one member voted for 4.25%.

2026-11-05

The November 2026 Monetary Policy Summary and Minutes were published and the Bank Rate increase was reported as effective.

2027-02-01

The MPC’s Market Participants Survey median expectation referenced in the minutes placed Bank Rate at 4.25% in February 2027; this is an expectation, not a scheduled regulatory change.

Suggested considerations

• Compliance, treasury and risk teams may wish to confirm that systems, product disclosures and contractual interest calculations use the revised 4% Bank Rate where applicable from the relevant effective date.
• Mortgage and consumer-credit providers should consider assessing customer communications, affordability monitoring and conduct-risk impacts for tracker, variable-rate and refinancing products affected by the increase.
• Banks and other lenders may wish to reassess interest-rate, credit, liquidity and concentration-risk assumptions, including scenarios involving inflation near 5% in 2027 Q2 and further Bank Rate increases.
• Investment firms and trading businesses should consider reviewing valuation, margin, collateral, hedging and client-risk controls for sterling rates, gilts, swaps and other rate-sensitive positions.
• Firms may wish to monitor the MPC’s identified indicators of second-round effects, including wage settlements, firms’ pricing behaviour, household and business expectations, energy-cost pass-through and economic slack.
• Governance committees may wish to document the effect of the rate decision and the Bank’s adverse and weaker-demand scenarios in applicable risk assessments, recovery planning, stress testing and customer-outcome monitoring.
• Treasury and product teams should consider verifying that forecasts and liquidity plans reflect the Bank’s warning that further tightening remains possible if elevated energy prices become persistent or feed into wages and prices.

What changed

This is a monetary-policy decision rather than a new binding compliance rule. Bank Rate increased from 3.75% to 4%, raising the reference cost relevant to floating-rate lending, tracker mortgages, treasury funding, derivatives valuation and certain contractual interest calculations. The MPC stated that monetary policy is not on a pre-set path and will be reassessed at each meeting, with particular attention to underlying pay, pricing behaviour, economic slack and the transmission of higher energy prices.

Key dates

2021-12-20

The AFM published its exploratory report on finfluencing, identifying unlicensed advice, risky recommendations, cooperation with unlicensed firms and customer-referral fees as key pitfalls.

2026-08-31

The Rotterdam District Court reduced the Van den Brink fine by €52,500 to €142,500, citing proportionality, delayed AFM action and breach of the reasonable-time requirement under Article 6 ECHR.

2026-11-05

The AFM published the enforcement update describing the original €195,000 fine and the court's final €142,500 outcome.

Suggested considerations

• Compliance teams should consider inventorying all finfluencer, affiliate, introducer and referral arrangements, including website links, discount codes, lead forms and onboarding assistance.
• Firms should consider verifying the AFM authorisation status of every investment-service provider, platform or asset manager promoted by employees, affiliates or contracted influencers before publication or referral activity begins.
• Investment firms should consider testing whether any payment is calculated by reference to the number of referred customers, account openings, onboarding progress, deposits or invested assets, as these features create heightened Dutch inducement and conduct risk.
• Firms should consider separating permitted advertising services from customer-introduction or onboarding activities and documenting why each arrangement does not involve unauthorised investment advice, portfolio management or participation in unlicensed services.
• Marketing and compliance teams may wish to review influencer scripts, direct messages, Q&A responses and customer-support practices for advice, personalised recommendations or operational assistance that exceeds passive advertising.
• Firms should consider collecting and retaining contracts, commission calculations, communications, approval records and evidence of licence checks so that the commercial purpose and control framework for each promotion can be demonstrated.
• Governance committees may wish to treat unusually high or asset-based referral commissions, including percentages of customer deposits, as escalation indicators requiring enhanced legal and compliance review.
• Firms should consider reviewing legacy arrangements in light of the AFM's 2021 finfluencer findings and subsequent enforcement against referral-fee models, including arrangements involving execution-only services.

What changed

This is an enforcement action rather than a new rule or general licensing amendment. The AFM treated Van den Brink's combined activities—promotion through social media and a website, investor introduction, assistance with registration, responses to investor questions and acting as a contact person—as participation in illegal asset management, not merely advertising. The AFM stated that Grinta Invest had no required licence and that Van den Brink received substantial referral remuneration, including 10% of investors' deposited capital; the remuneration was relevant to the original fine.

Key dates

2026-11-04

The SEC adopted the amendments to Rules 0-10, 0-7, 203-3 and related Form ADV provisions.

Suggested considerations

• Compliance teams may wish to reassess the firm's status under Advisers Act Rule 0-7 and Investment Company Act Rule 0-10 using current Form ADV regulatory assets under management, fund-family relationships, net assets, and control relationships.
• Advisers and fund groups should distinguish the revised Regulatory Flexibility Act small-entity classification from SEC registration thresholds, eligibility for regulatory exemptions, and other substantive compliance obligations; the amendments do not alter those requirements.
• Fund administrators and regulatory reporting teams should review family-of-investment-companies aggregation data against Form N-CEN Item B.5 and prepare to apply the revised aggregation methodology when the amendments become effective.
• Advisers that rely on or may need a continuing hardship exemption from electronic filing should review the related Rule 203-3 and Form ADV amendments and confirm procedures, systems, and filing calendars before the compliance date.
• Compliance teams may wish to monitor the Federal Register for the publication date and calculate the 90-day effective and compliance date, since the SEC release does not yet provide a calendar date for that event.
• Regulatory policy teams should consider whether the broader small-entity population changes how the SEC's future rulemakings and Regulatory Flexibility Act analyses may affect the firm's cost and burden profile, without assuming that the classification creates immediate operational relief.

What changed

Rule 0-10 increases the net-asset threshold for an investment company, including a business development company, to $10 billion from $50 million and replaces the existing related-fund aggregation approach with a reference to a family of investment companies as used in Form N-CEN Item B.5. Rule 0-7 increases the investment-adviser small-entity threshold to less than $1 billion of regulatory assets under management from $25 million, eliminates the separate investment-adviser total-assets threshold, and makes conforming changes to the control-relationship tests.

Key dates

2026-11-04

ASIC published the enforcement notice covering 22 large proprietary companies and confirmed total payments of $4,356,000.

2025-08-01

Approximate month in which ASIC commenced its data-focused surveillance of large proprietary companies and other entities for late or missing financial reports.

Suggested considerations

• Compliance teams may wish to map every Australian entity in the corporate group against its financial reporting obligations, including changes in size, ownership, control, corporate structure and operations.
• Firms should consider maintaining a central obligations register recording each entity's financial year end, applicable reporting category, audit requirements, board approval milestones and ASIC lodgement deadline.
• Finance and governance functions may wish to schedule audit planning, management accounts, director approvals and electronic lodgement sufficiently early to address audit-related delays.
• Directors and company secretaries should consider reviewing whether any financial reports, directors' reports or auditors' reports are overdue and arranging prompt lodgement rather than waiting for ASIC contact.
• Groups may wish to document controls for identifying newly reportable entities, including entities that become large proprietary companies or become foreign-controlled.
• Compliance teams should consider retaining evidence of deadline monitoring, auditor engagement, escalation of reporting delays and remediation of overdue filings in case ASIC opens a surveillance review.
• Where ASIC has contacted an entity or an infringement notice has been paid, firms should consider confirming whether all outstanding reports have been lodged because ASIC states that its investigation may continue and payment does not resolve separate reporting obligations.

What changed

No new statutory reporting rule was introduced. ASIC has escalated enforcement of existing obligations under the Corporations Act 2001, including the requirement for large proprietary companies and other prescribed entities to prepare, audit and lodge required financial reports, directors' reports and auditors' reports within the applicable statutory period. For most entities required to lodge, the general deadline is within four months after financial year end; disclosing entities, registered schemes and registrable superannuation entities generally have three months.

Key dates

2026-01-19

The PRM sourcebook and related POATR regime rules and amendments referred to in PMB 67 came into force.

2026-11-04

FCA published Primary Market Bulletin 67, launched the consultation on Knowledge Base amendments through GC26/8, and published the new PMB and ESS information.

2026-12-09 Deadline

Deadline for comments on GC26/8 consultation proposals concerning consequential Knowledge Base amendments.

Suggested considerations

• Sponsors should consider mapping every current and planned AI use case to the relevant sponsor workstream, identifying activities where AI assistance is unsuitable or requires enhanced review, including complex negotiations, board-level strategic advice and definitive ethical or legal accountability.
• Sponsors should consider documenting named human responsibility for validating AI outputs, correcting hallucinations and omissions, independently challenging analysis, and approving final sponsor work products.
• Compliance and risk teams may wish to review AI policies and controls for approved-tool restrictions, consumer-tool blocking or limitation, confidential-information handling, third-party adviser use, supplier confidentiality, model changes, and accountability for both information entered and output received.
• Sponsors should consider whether prompts, outputs, transcripts, drafts and related review evidence constitute records, and whether retained files demonstrate and permit verification of the basis for material judgements in accordance with applicable sponsor record-keeping arrangements.
• Primary-market legal and compliance teams should review employee and former-employee offering exemptions against PRM 1.4.12(2)(c), particularly where employee incentive or share schemes rely on the prospectus exemption.
• Interested firms should consider submitting comments on GC26/8 by 9 December 2026 and reviewing the final Knowledge Base amendments once published.
• ESS administrators should consider adopting the Update My Profile process, ensuring that profile changes are supported by a stated reason and that any impact on open cases is selected deliberately.
• Issuers and data users may wish to assess the new NSM interface and prepare for future FCA MIRA issuer profiles, API access and changes to the Official List, while continuing to maintain existing disclosure submission processes until further FCA instructions are issued.

What changed

The FCA has launched an enhanced NSM interface and intends to develop FCA MIRA, combining a modernised NSM, a modernised Official List, issuer profile pages, reference and short-position data, and an API for bulk access. The FCA has not introduced a new AI-specific rule in PMB 67, but its review provides clear supervisory expectations for sponsors: AI may support research, summarisation, drafting, due diligence, quality assurance and other work, but must not replace sponsor professional judgement, independent challenge, accountability or conclusions reached after due and careful enquiry.

Key dates

2026-01-19

The Public Offers and Admissions to Trading Regulations 2024 regime and the PRM sourcebook came into force, replacing the UK Prospectus Regulation framework for relevant new activity.

2026-07-31

The FCA’s PRM Clarificatory Amendments Instrument 2026 came into force, including amendments to PRM 1.4.12R and PRM 10.1.9R.

2026-11-04

GC26/8 consultation opened and the FCA published Primary Market Bulletin No. 67.

2026-12-09 Deadline

Deadline for comments on the proposed amendments and revocations.

Suggested considerations

• Firms should review the proposed amendments to TN 602.5 and TN 605.5 and consider submitting comments to the FCA at [email protected] by 9 December 2026.
• Issuers and advisers should reassess employee and director share-scheme prospectus-exemption analyses under PRM 1.4.12R, including whether any onward-transfer purpose could make the exemption unavailable.
• Issuers, arrangers and counsel should update precedent opinions, prospectus checklists and supplementary-prospectus procedures to use the PRM 10.1.9R “manifestly the same” formulation rather than relying on the former “fungible” wording.
• Firms should identify references to UKLA/TN/103.1 and PN 902.4 in listing manuals, training, transaction checklists and legal memoranda, and determine whether those references should be removed or replaced with current UKLR, PRM or FCA website material.
• Teams handling legacy prospectuses should distinguish the new PRM framework from saving provisions for prospectuses approved under the former UK Prospectus Regulation, including the transitional provisions in regulation 48 of the Public Offers and Admissions to Trading Regulations 2024.
• Compliance teams may wish to monitor the FCA’s final decision and the Knowledge Base after the consultation closes before treating the proposed deletions or amended notes as final guidance.

What changed

The FCA proposes to amend Primary Market/TN/602.5 so that its guidance on the prospectus exemption for securities offered, allotted or to be allotted to existing or former directors or employees refers to PRM 1.4.12(2)(c). The related PRM 1.4.12R amendment is intended to ensure that the exemption is used only for legitimate incentive and employee share schemes and is unavailable where the purpose is subsequent transfer rather than a genuine employee or director scheme.

Key dates

2026-11-04

The OCC issued Bulletin 2026-54 and the Supervisory Framework on Bank Use of Super Intelligence for examiner use.

Suggested considerations

• Compliance teams may wish to inventory current and planned SI and agentic-SI use cases, including embedded functionality supplied by vendors, and map each use case to its business owner, permitted actions, autonomy level, human oversight, data sources, and potential consequences of failure or misuse.
• Banks should consider documenting a risk-based classification methodology focused on potential consequences, transfer of agency, and degree of human oversight rather than technical sophistication alone.
• Risk and control owners may wish to assess whether existing model-risk, governance, data-governance, privacy, cybersecurity, compliance, operational-resilience, vendor-management, testing, monitoring, documentation, auditability, and independent-challenge controls adequately address SI-enabled activities.
• Higher-consequence or more autonomous use cases should be considered for stronger restrictions on permitted actions, more direct human oversight, independent validation or challenge, enhanced performance monitoring, audit trails, testing, fallback procedures, and resilience measures.
• Boards and senior management may wish to clarify accountability for SI deployments without creating a separate SI risk appetite unless the bank determines that one is useful internally; the OCC framework does not require one.
• Internal audit and compliance teams may wish to retain evidence showing how SI risks are identified, measured, monitored, controlled, and escalated within existing risk-management frameworks, particularly because examiners may use the framework during ordinary examinations despite its nonbinding status.
• Banks should consider reviewing contracts and oversight arrangements for SI vendors, including access to data, model changes, incident notification, testing rights, service continuity, explainability or transparency, subcontracting, and termination or fallback arrangements.
• Compliance teams may wish to monitor future OCC revisions and stakeholder feedback because the framework is expressly intended to be a living document.

What changed

The OCC provided examiners with a risk-based, proportionate framework covering SI used in activities including credit decisioning, payments, fraud detection, customer service, operations, risk management, and market activities. Examiners are instructed to consider the bank’s size, complexity, risk profile, and the nature, consequences, autonomy, and complexity of each SI use case; banks are not required to create a separate SI risk category or SI-specific risk appetite. The framework identifies 16 components across six pillars: purpose, risk, control, oversight, resilience, and assurance.

Key dates

2026-11-04

The OCC issued Bulletin 2026-54 and the accompanying supervisory framework for examiner use.

2026-10-02

Executive Order 14434 was published in the Federal Register and is cited by the OCC as the source for the “super intelligence” terminology and broader definition.

Suggested considerations

• Firms should consider maintaining an inventory of SI and agentic use cases, documenting each system’s purpose, permitted actions, accessible data and systems, prohibited uses, degree of autonomy, human-oversight model, and business owner.
• Compliance teams may wish to prioritize review of use cases according to potential consequences of failure or misuse, transfer of decision-making agency, reversibility, customer or market impact, data sensitivity, and the practical ability of personnel to intervene.
• Banks should consider testing whether human reviewers can meaningfully understand, reject, pause, or stop system outputs and actions, rather than relying solely on nominal approval checkpoints or high-volume bulk approvals.
• Risk functions may wish to map SI-enabled activities to existing model risk management, operational-risk, cybersecurity, privacy, consumer-protection, compliance, and business-continuity controls instead of creating a standalone SI risk category.
• Governance teams should consider assigning accountable owners across the system lifecycle, including approval, deployment, change management, incident response, suspension, retirement, and post-incident remediation.
• Banks should consider establishing monitoring capable of detecting model drift, erroneous or harmful actions, unauthorized activity, control exceptions, low-frequency high-impact events, and customer harm, with defined escalation and containment procedures.
• Third-party risk teams may wish to review contracts for vendor notification of model changes and new SI functionality, incident and notification timelines, audit and testing rights, data-use restrictions, responsibility for model errors, service suspension rights, and operational-resilience obligations.
• Internal audit and independent validation functions should consider whether they can reconstruct material outputs and actions, assess control effectiveness, and provide effective challenge to developers, business owners, and validation teams.

What changed

The OCC provided examiners with a framework that supplements existing model risk management, governance, technology, compliance, cybersecurity, and operational-risk practices. It covers 16 components organized around purpose, risk, control, oversight, resilience, and assurance, including permitted use and authority, criticality assessment, human-in-the-loop and human-on-the-loop controls, governance and accountability, performance monitoring, operational resilience, documentation and auditability, vendor risk, testing, and independent challenge.