This was a joint event on January 30th with the Luxembourg Practice of Alpha FMC, led by Head of Compliance Marc Marly. Prominent companies including Franklin Templeton, AllianceBernstein, Invesco EMEA, Capital Group, Schroders, Jupiter Asset Management, HSBC, and Columbia Threadneedle Investments EMEA APAC were among the industry leaders present at the debate.

The main focus was on how distributor governance and oversight are expected to change over time, especially given the legal environment of the CSSF.

The changing environment of distributor supervision

Marc Marly started the conversation by revealing some of the difficulties managers are having adjusting to CSSF Circular 18/698. This discussion laid the groundwork for a more thorough investigation of how businesses are resolving these issues in order to have a thorough grasp of international distribution agreements. In describing Franklin Templeton's approach to integrating the Legg Mason purchase, Rafal Kwasny underlined the strategic significance of bolstering governance and supervision in order to efficiently grow distributor onboarding and management procedures.

Novelties in the Due Diligence of Distributors

Laurent Denayer, CEO of ume, made a significant contribution to the roundtable by giving a detailed summary of how distributor due diligence procedures have changed over the previous seven years. His observations demonstrated the synthesis of science and art necessary to extract responses that significantly contribute to risk assessment models, and they emphasized the significance of focused questioning in reducing oversight and due-diligence concerns.

Problems and fixes for distributor relationship management

The challenge faced by the sector to strike a balance between regulatory compliance and business objectives was highlighted during a discussion about the intricacy of managing commercial agreements with distributors. Head of Product at Aiviq Luke Tones gave a demonstration of how their system addresses these issues by providing a single point of contact for managing distribution agreements and associated KPIs, enabling a more streamlined distributor supervision process.

Final reflections on distributor supervision

In order to improve the entire client experience, the session finished with thoughts on the ongoing difficulty of establishing a holistic perspective of distributor relationships and the importance of combining commercial, risk, and operational data. In addition to providing insightful information on the present and future of distributor oversight and regulatory compliance, the roundtable encouraged lively discussion among attendees, laying the groundwork for future talks in the industry.