Outsourcing

Recent Articles

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  02/02/2024

  DORA obligations apply to different payment operators and processors in Spain

  Royal Decree-Law 8/2023 applies certain obligations of DORA Regulation to payment system operators, payment scheme operators, electronic payment arrangement operators, payment processors and other technological or technical service providers.On 28 December 2023, Royal Decree-Law 8/2023, of 27 December, adopting measures to address the economic and social consequences of the conflicts in Ukraine and the Middle East, as well as to mitigate the effects of the drought (hereinafter the "Royal Decree-Law"), was published in the Official State Gazette (BOE). Among other measures, the text includes certain...

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  21/12/2023

  Critical Third Parties: The unstoppable march of the regulatory universe

  Expansion of the regulatory perimeterThe Financial Services and Markets Act 2023 establishes a new Critical Third Parties regime which gave power to the FCA, PRA and Bank of England to make rules to govern critical third party service providers (CTPs) to the UK’s financial services industry for the first time. The regulators have now published a joint consultation paper (CP26/23) for this new regulatory framework for CTPs.The new rules bring CTPs into the scope of the regulatory perimeter for the first time, reflecting a significant and transformative shift for CTPs but not, it seems, for...

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  07/11/2023

  Financial services outsourcings and AI

  With the AI summit last week in Bletchley Park where a world-first agreement has been made between the UK, EU, US and China on the opportunities and risks posed by AI, we thought it was a good time to provide our initial thoughts on AI and the potential impact on regulated outsourcing arrangements. As outlined in the Bletchley Declaration, AI presents a significant opportunity for regulated firms to enhance and automate processes and tasks, both internally and externally via third party service providers, alongside some complex challenges and risks.Ultimately, our view is that the challenges are...

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  20/06/2023

  The Consumer Duty and outsourcing: remediation or not?

  The Consumer Duty (“Duty”) applies to all regulated firms that have a material influence over, or determine, retail customer outcomes. As firms approach the key 31 July 2023 milestone for their implementation work, focus turns to the potential impact on firms’ outsourced service arrangements for both day 1 and on operational controls on an ongoing basis.In-scope agreementsThe Duty will apply even where a firm does not have a direct contractual relationship with the retail customer. This may be where the firm has outsourced arrangements with:an unregulated service provider whose...

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  21/10/2022

  Tokenised Funds Series: Paper 5 – Operational & Cyber Resilience Implications

  This publication was first published by The IA in collaboration with CMS, in October 2022.

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  01/09/2022

  Critical Third Parties to the financial services sector discussion paper published

  Minimum resilience standards for CTPsThe paper discusses the FSM Bill’s proposal to allow supervisory authorities to create the rules for CTPs setting out the expected resilience standards and associated requirements. As part of this, the FSM Bill includes a proposed requirement for regulatory coordination by supervisory authorities which could lead in practice (the paper argues) to a coordinated set of minimum resilience standards for CTPs, with any difference in standards between supervisory authorities being necessary with regard to their statutory requirements.The potential minimum standards...

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