Bank of Russia assesses implementation status of financial market participants’ proposals from ‘233 KPIs’
The regulator assessed the actual impact of six implemented proposals made by the professional community (‘233 KPIs’) in three activity areas: credit rating agencies, actuaries, and financial market infrastructure and instruments.
These implemented proposals include information disclosure about methodology applied by rating agencies, requirements for the certification of actuaries — members of SROs (self-regulatory organisations) matching international standards (the code of ethics, examination subjects), measures to ensure publicity for the registers of actuaries and excluded persons, professional requirements for the responsible actuary in line with the regulator’s requirements for a respective market segment, a regulatory framework used for asset securitisation, and introduction of an operator-managed money account.
The Bank of Russia has examined the list of enacted legislative and regulatory amendments designed for the implementation of all proposals and the actual status of their application.
Specifically, the adoption of the law on the activity of credit rating agencies helped enhance the rating industry’s transparency for the investment community. It also raised the quality of rating assessments due to improved methodology, enabled the general comparison of basic approaches employed by rating agencies and the preliminary assessment of criteria list used to assign rating. Additionally, the manner to present information in websites used by several rating agencies became more structured and clear for users than earlier.
In the sphere of actuarial activities, work was done to develop requirements for the professional qualification of actuaries on the basis of international standards. The Bank of Russia held five qualification examinations for 387 candidates seeking to join the SROs of actuaries. 105 persons passed these exams, of them 85 joined the SROs, and 24 persons of the latter number became responsible actuaries afterwards. As a result of the enhanced complexity of the qualification examination only highly qualified specialists joined SROs, thereby raising both actuaries’ interest in SROs and the status of these organisations.
Information on the registers of actuarial SROs and the single register of responsible actuaries, and also information on individuals excluded from these registers became open for public. This made it considerably easier to receive and to seek information on professional actuaries.
Besides, work was done to organise a professional certification of responsible actuaries to be held by the SROs in line with the regulator’s requirements. Among other things, these efforts helped improve the quality of actuarial opinions.
Finally, uniform securitisation standards were introduced for various asset types to eliminate regulatory gaps, and legal framework was created for agreements, escrow accounts and nominal accounts.
In its analysis, the Bank of Russia drew on the findings of the professional community survey conducted jointly with Analytical Centre Forum, a non-profit fund, and also own information and analytical materials.
Based on monitoring results, market participants believe that all the proposals under consideration have been fully implemented.