Compliance & Ethics

The Belgian Data Protection Authority reviewed Articles 3 and 4 of a draft law that would expand medical follow-up for incapacity for work and require treating physicians to pass other healthcare professionals' findings to insurers' advising physicians. The Authority found that the draft delegates too much to the King, lacks the required precision and foreseeability, and was not supported by a data protection impact assessment. Organizations handling health data for insurance or control purposes should expect stricter statutory limits and prepare for them.

The European Banking Authority has adopted a decision establishing a shared technical platform, built on its EUCLID infrastructure, through which issuers of asset-referenced tokens (ARTs) and e-money tokens (EMTs) must submit MiCA reporting data directly. Issuers can satisfy their reporting obligations only through this platform, so compliance teams must prepare for onboarding and new submission workflows. The decision took effect immediately upon adoption.

EIOPA rejected Question 3635 on whether basic own funds subject to national anti-contribution rules must be classified as restricted items within a ring-fenced fund under Articles 80 and 81 of Delegated Regulation (EU) 2015/35. The rejection rests on the matter having already been answered in Q&A 3591, so no new guidance is created. Compliance teams should treat Q&A 3591 as the operative reference for this topic.

The Austrian Financial Market Authority (FMA) reports that assets under management in Austrian investment funds reached a record EUR $260.1 Billion at the end of June 2026, up 7.6% from March and 12% year over year. The release imposes no new obligations, but it signals shifting flow patterns, including bond fund inflows and continued real estate and mixed fund outflows, that matter for liquidity, valuation, and supervisory risk. It also introduces a redesigned FMA Quarterly Report Asset Management that compliance teams can use for benchmarking.

The Bank of England's MPC has replaced its annual QT decisions with a multi-year plan to fully unwind the remaining monetary policy gilt portfolio by September 2034. The plan is a reduction of an annual average of GBP £46 Billion, including annual sales of GBP £20 Billion, and the Bank is considering moving sales from the market to the UK Government. Compliance, treasury, and risk teams should reassess assumptions on gilt supply, liquidity, and rate sensitivity, because APF auctions pause until operational details are announced by April 2027.

SEC Division of Trading and Markets Director Jamie Selway used a roundtable to signal strong staff support for extended-hours equity trading, noting that market data infrastructure is scheduled to expand to 23 hours a day, five days a week on December 6, 2026. The remarks are not a rule or formal guidance, but they show where the Division's priorities lie and what it expects of the industry. Compliance teams should treat them as a prompt to confirm operational, surveillance, and investor-disclosure readiness for overnight trading.

In a speech at the Law Society Economic Crime Conference, the FCA's Steve Smart confirmed the regulator will begin AML supervision of roughly 60,000 legal and accounting sector entities at the end of 2028. The FCA promises a risk-based, proportionate, technology-enabled approach focused on criminals and professional enablers rather than compliant firms. Compliance teams in these sectors, and financial institutions that serve them, should begin preparing for a shift in supervisory expectations and in how they engage with the regulator.