Delegated regulation 2015/1 - Supplement to Regulation 1060/2009 with regard to regulatory technical standards for the periodic reporting on fees charged by credit rating agencies for the purpose of ongoing supervision by the European Securities and Markets Authority - Main contents

EN

Official Journal of the European Union

L 2/1

Article 11(3) and point 2 of Part II of Section E of Annex I to Regulation (EC) No 1060/2009 require a credit rating agency to annually disclose to ESMA the list of fees charged to each client for individual credit ratings and any ancillary services, as well as its pricing policy, including the fees structure and pricing criteria in relation to credit ratings for different asset classes. It is essential to provide for the technical details regarding the content to be reported and the format to be used by credit rating agencies in order to comply with their obligations and to allow ESMA to exercise its ongoing supervisory powers.

In order to mitigate conflicts of interest and facilitate fair competition in the credit rating market, ESMA should ensure that pricing policies, procedures and ultimately fees charged by credit rating agencies to clients are not discriminatory. Differences in fees charged for the same type of service should be justifiable by a difference in the actual costs in providing the service to different clients. Moreover, the fees charged for credit rating services to a given issuer should not depend on the results or outcome of the work performed.

The fee information to be submitted by registered credit rating agencies should allow ESMA to identify credit ratings that would require more in-depth scrutiny and possible further supervisory follow-up actions. Similar fees should be charged for credit ratings and ancillary services with similar features, differences in fee levels being justified on the basis of cost differences. The information collected should allow ESMA to identify, for each registered credit rating agency, comparable services and their respective fees and therefore to detect any significant deviations in fees charged. ESMA can thereafter undertake investigations to verify that any such fees are set according to lawful pricing policies and procedures and differences in fee levels based on cost differences are consistent with the principles of fair competition, are not due to conflicts of interest and do not depend on the results or outcome of the work performed.

Pricing policies and procedures should be reported for each rating type. For reporting purposes and in order to clearly distinguish each pricing policy and procedure and their respective updates, each version of the pricing policies with its respective fee schedules, fee programmes and procedures should have an identification number. For all other purposes, the pricing policies should include the fee structures or fee schedules as well as the pricing criteria that can be applied by the person or persons negotiating the fees to be charged for an individual credit rating. The pricing policies should also include any frequency or other fee programmes from which the rated entity or subscriber may benefit in terms of different fees charged for an individual rating or a set of credit ratings. Credit rating agencies should record all instances of where the pricing policies, fee schedules, fee programmes and procedures have not been applied and all...