Compliance & Ethics

The Belgian Financial Services and Markets Authority (FSMA) released a new version of its consumer-facing tool for comparing the costs of supplementary pension products. The tool benchmarks a product's costs against the average for similar products, which increases fee transparency and the likelihood that outliers will draw scrutiny. Compliance teams at pension product providers and distributors should review their cost disclosures and pricing against these benchmarks.

The Basel Institute for Governance announced a Norway-funded consortium initiative, running through the end of 2028, to disrupt corruption that enables illegal logging, timber trafficking, illegal mining, and carbon market fraud. It creates no new legal obligations, but it signals growing international attention to environmental corruption and the financial crime linked to it. Compliance teams should treat it as an indicator of emerging expectations for due diligence in forest-risk supply chains and carbon markets.

ASIC has published Form 529 (Notice of Meeting) and its accompanying guide, which set out how notice must be lodged for various creditor, member, contributor, and debenture holder meetings in insolvency contexts. The materials are not new substantive rules (the form is dated January 2011 and the guide July 2014), but they matter to compliance and insolvency-related teams because lodgement timing, signatory authority, and content requirements carry statutory consequences. Note that the press release date (2026-09-15) does not match the form's own dates, so teams should confirm whether anything has actually changed.

The ECB has launched a call for expression of interest inviting EU-established e-commerce and m-commerce merchants with reach in at least two pilot locations to join the beta digital euro pilot, with applications due by 17:00 CET on October 27, 2026. Selected merchants will sign a non-negotiable agreement with the ECB and a contract with an acquiring pilot PSP, which creates legal, operational, and reputational obligations that compliance teams must assess before applying.

Finanstilsynet has listed aureoncorevix.net on its warning list, relaying a warning first issued by France's Autorité des marchés financiers (AMF) on its crypto-currency blacklist. The entry signals a suspected unauthorized or fraudulent crypto-asset operation targeting European investors. Compliance teams should treat it as a threat-intelligence indicator and update screening and customer-protection controls.

BaFin is already applying ESMA's forthcoming guidelines on when a supplement to a base prospectus amounts to an impermissible introduction of a new type of security, and it is abandoning its previous administrative practice on product-modifying supplements. Compliance and capital markets teams at issuers of base prospectuses should align their supplement preparation and review processes now, rather than waiting for the formal application date.

ASIC has published Form 485 and its accompanying guide, which require directors to lodge a statement within seven days if they pass a negative solvency resolution or fail to pass any resolution within two months of the company's review date. The document restates existing obligations under section 347A of the Corporations Act 2001 rather than introducing new ones. Compliance teams should confirm that review dates, board resolutions, and lodgment deadlines are tracked across all Australian entities.