Principles for Financial Markets Infrastructures - PFMI (announcement of January 3, 2014)

In April 2012, in response to the global financial crisis, the Committee on Payments and Settlement Systems of the BIS and the Technical Committee of the International Organization of Securities Commissions (IOSCO) published the Principles for Financial Markets Infrastructures (PFMI), international standards for the oversight and supervision of systemically important payment systems, central securities depositories and securities settlement systems, central counterparties and trade repositories. The PFMIs aim at strengthening the resilience of financial markets infrastructures in case of wide-scale crises.

The 24 Principles are grouped according to the feature of the financial market infrastructure they address, in order to ensure the safety and efficiency of FMIs: general organization, credit and liquidity risk management, settlement, central securities depositories and exchange of value settlement systems, default management, general business and operational risk management, access, efficiency, transparency. The new standards tighten the requirements for risk management and transparency towards FMI users; specific attention is devoted to access requirements and relationships with participants, including indirect ones. The PFMIs are completed by five Responsibilities addressed to financial authorities to ensure that FMIs are effectively regulated and supervised.

In Q2 of 2013 CPSS-IOSCO launched an implementation monitoring exercise aimed at assessing the level of implementation of the PFMIs in each single jurisdiction: Italy was found to be aligned to the level of implementation of other Eurosystem jurisdictions.

As of 2014, the Principles for Financial Markets Infrastructures and the relevant assessment methodology are the reference standards for the performance of Banca d'Italia's and Consob's respective tasks. They complement the European and national legal framework applicable to supervised financial markets infrastructures.