The French AMF, in its capacity as national competent authority under the Securitisation Regulation, did a spot check of five unnamed financial institutions issuing STS securitisations. The regulator looked at the institutions’ procedures around the issuance of STS securitisations generally, then examined in detail a number of transactions. Their conclusions are now published in the form of a report (in English)
It would be fair to say that the regulator was deeply unimpressed by what it found in a number of cases. They expressed the view that, for several institutions (unnamed to spare blushes), the processes around the due diligences of the STS nature of a transaction were weak to barely existent. They also concluded that some transactions failed to meet one of the criteria regarding SPVs.
We would be superhumanly modest if we did not draw attention to a strong recommendation made by the AMF to French originators to mandate a third party verification agent. Something they describe as a “good practice”. We are grateful to the AMF, as an impartial and knowledgeable actor, for their recognition of the added value that we bring to the STS process.
PCS welcomes both the spot checking and the report as visible evidence of a phenomenon that we are witnessing across many European jurisdictions: national competent authorities have begun to examine with care the practices and criteria around STS issuance. When we see the complexities and subtleties our analysts wrestle with each day, we can but conclude the risk of an originator without a thorough understanding of the rules being caught on the wrong side of the STS line have considerably increased.
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