Transfer to the CSSF of competence for authorisation

To be in line with the changes in the European law and for greater consistency in the procedures, the Commission de Surveillance du Secteur Financier (CSSF) has, following the entry into force of the “Authorisation Law” of 21 July 2021, henceforth sole competence for taking final decisions as regards the grant, refusal and withdrawal of authorisations.

The “Authorisation Law”

The Law of 21 July 2021 was published in Mémorial A 560 on Monday 26 July 2021 and entered into force on Friday 30 July 2021. As from that date, the CSSF has sole competence for granting, refusing and withdrawing authorisations of certain entities under its supervision, instead of the Minister of Finance.

Concretely, the authorisation procedures for the following entities are concerned: mortgage credit intermediaries, all the PFS as defined by Article 1 of the Law of 5 April 1993 on the financial sector, as amended (investment firms, specialised PFS and support PFS), branches of foreign PFS other than investment firms, branches of third-country credit institutions, third-country firms providing investment services or performing investment activities, fiduciary-representatives governed by the Law of 22 March 2004 on securitisation, as amended, payment institutions and electronic money institutions and regulated markets.

To this end, amendments have been made to various laws (Consumer Code, the Law of 5 April 1993 on the financial sector, the CSSF’s organic Law of 23 December 1998, the Law of 22 March 2004 on securitisation, the Law of 10 November 2009 on payment services and the Law of 30 May 2018 on markets in financial instruments). These amendments only concern the transfer of competence for granting of authorisation from the Minister of Finance to the CSSF and do not change the conditions for granting, refusing or withdrawing an authorisation. Capital requirements remain unchanged as well.

These changes take into account the development of EU law which increasingly advocates conferring authorisation powers to the national competent authorities in charge of prudential supervision.

Impact for the financial sector

The CSSF will continue to pre-examine and examine the applications submitted to it. For supervised entities, this change has the benefit that the authorisation process no longer requires the involvement of both the CSSF and the Ministry of Finance. It should be noted that over the last years, the CSSF has developed a digital portal strategy, notably in order to make exchanges with supervised entities swifter and more transparent.