ALFI responds to the EU Commission’s ‘have your say’ on the proposal for a regulation on a framework for Financial Data Access

ALFI responded to the EU Commission’s ‘have your say’ on the proposal for the proposed regulation on Financial Data Access (FiDA) and amending regulations (EU) No 1093/2010, (EU) No 1094/2010, (EU) No 1095/2010 and (EU) 2022/2554. ALFI represents the Luxembourg asset management and investment fund community and emphasizes the importance of considering the impact of the proposed regulation on the fund industry. The document highlights fundamental considerations and recommendations in the following thematic paragraphs.
The first priority highlighted by ALFI is the definition of „customer“ within the proposed regulation, which encompasses both natural and legal persons. ALFI raises concerns about the challenges posed by including legal persons in the scope of the proposal, particularly due to the diverse nature of corporate counterparties. The association recommends focusing the scope of FiDA on natural persons and excluding legal persons, or alternatively, implementing a phased approach that initially focuses on natural persons before extending to legal persons.
ALFI also addresses the issue of effective costs and compensation associated with the mandatory provision of data. The document emphasizes the need for a fair compensation model that accurately captures all costs, including both explicit and implicit costs. ALFI recommends a more flexible and principle-based framework for determining compensation, taking into account the differences across entities and ensuring that micro enterprises are not disproportionately burdened.
The scope of data to be exchanged is another key consideration outlined by ALFI. The document suggests focusing on existing data and limiting the accessibility and sharing requirements to raw data and a limited list of transactional data. ALFI emphasizes the need to clarify the treatment of data acquired from third parties and the complexity of exchanging information on various financial instruments, including investments in financial instruments and crypto-assets.
ALFI also raises concerns about the potential for fragmented requests under the proposed regulation which could result in dimensionality problems and increased complexity. The association recommends standardizing the data range associated with requests from a single customer to ensure manageability and feasibility of the framework.
Lastly, the document addresses potential side effects of the proposed regulation, particularly the asymmetric impact on data holders based on industry, business model, size, and age of the entity. ALFI emphasizes the importance of preserving diversity in the market and avoiding creating oligopolistic situations. The document also suggests certain entities from the list of entities entitled to act as financial services information providersand emphasizes the need for appropriate supervision, especially for entities based outside the EU.
The document concludes by highlighting the unrealistic timing for implementing schemes under the proposed regulation, emphasizing the constraints, elements to clarify, and operational aspects that need to be addressed.