The Association for Financial Markets in Europe (AFME) has published a new due diligence questionnaire in a bid standardise and simplify them for sub-custodians.
Consensus was built to simplify the process of evaluating sub-custodians at the Network Managers (NeMa) Conference last year, prompting the AFME post-trade board to create taskforce, comprising 20 network managers, to produce a new harmonised questionnaire.
Using a Thomas Murray questionnaire as a baseline, AFME’s goal was to harmonise 80 percent of members’ questions. That percentage proved to be significantly higher when the association recently piloted the document.
Alan Cameron, global solutions sponsor for clearing and custody services at BNP Paribas Securities Services and chair of the AFME due diligence questionnaire taskforce, commented: “Our industry is delighted that AFME took the lead in addressing this long-running and increasingly burdensome issue.”
“We are grateful to all the banks that contributed to this project and look forward to working with them to ensure the maximum usage in 2017 and the years ahead. Whilst getting the questions agreed amongst ourselves is important, the success of this project will be measured by usage across our industry.”
The document, which is available now, will be reviewed by AFME in Q3 2017 to reflect any regulatory changes or major themes that develop over the coming year.
Firms that participated in the development of the questionnaire included Bank of America Merrill Lynch, BNP Paribas, BNY Mellon, J.P. Morgan, Northern Trust, Standard Chartered, Societe Generale, Standard Bank and UniCredit.
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