Financial Market Infrastructure Department

The Financial Market Infrastructure Department was created in 2020 on the basis of the Securities Market and Commodity Market Department.

The establishment of the Department became necessary because of the increased significance of financial market infrastructure organisations, the expansion of the scope of their services as a result of new activities, and the provision of high-technology services by such organisations not only to professional market participants, but also to their clients.

The scope of responsibility of the Department includes the regulation and supervision of financial organisations constituting the accounting infrastructure of the financial market (the central depository, depositories, registrars, and specialised depositories), trade and settlement infrastructure (exchanges, clearing houses, including non-bank credit institutions — central counterparties, and commodity supply operators), and organisations collecting, storing, analysing and providing information needed for the efficient functioning of the financial market (repositories, pricing centres, and credit rating agencies). The Department also regulates and supervises investment platforms and their operators.

The Department carries out supervision applying a risk-based approach, which enables not only a fast response to violations, but also preventive identification of risks infrastructure organisations’ activities. Given the systemic importance and variety of activity types of such organisations, the early development of risk mitigation measures is of key importance for the financial market in general.

Today, a key objective of the Department in the sphere of regulation is the elaboration and enhancement of the legislative and regulatory framework for new activities and entities engaged therein.

After the development of the relevant legislative framework is completed, the remit of the Department will encompass new infrastructure entities (electronic platform operators, the registrar of financial transactions, and digital financial asset exchange operators) and issues related to the functioning of electronic platforms and information systems, which will ensure the issue, accounting and turnover of digital financial assets.