The International Organization of Securities Commissions (IOSCO) technical committee has published details on the template for the global collection of hedge fund information.
The new template will assist in assessing possible systemic risks arising from the sector. It will enable the collection and exchange of consistent and comparable data among regulators and other competent authorities for the purpose of facilitating international supervisory cooperation in identifying possible systemic risks in this sector.
The template was developed by the task force on unregulated entities following requests from the Financial Stability Board (FSB) and from IOSCO members.
The template will allow regulators to gather comparable and consistent data from managers and advisors about their trading activities, the markets they operate in, funding and counterparty information. There are 11 proposed categories of information which incorporate both supervisory and systemic data.
It is not a comprehensive list of all types of information and data that regulators might want and so regulators are not restricted from requiring additional information at a domestic level.
IOSCO said it was publishing the template now to help inform any planned legislative changes being considered in various jurisdictions, as well as providing securities regulators the type of information authorities could gather. The first data gathering exercise will be carried out in September 2010.
“IOSCO believes that regulators should seek to develop a comparable and consistent set of data to be collected from local hedge fund managers and advisers to monitor systemic risks and prevent gaps in regulatory reporting requirements,” said Kathleen Casey, chairman of the technical committee. “We recognize that the legislative process is ongoing in many jurisdictions and their outcomes could further influence the information needed to monitor systemic risk in the hedge fund sector, as well as who collects the data. Nonetheless, setting out these categories of information may help regulators in the assessment of systemic risk and help to inform the relevant legislative debates.”
