On 17 November 2025, the European Securities and Markets Authority (ESMA) issued a peer review report on the supervision of depositary obligations.

Peer review

The report sets out ESMA’s findings following a peer review on the supervision of depositary obligations, under two supervisory expectations, oversight and safekeeping. For oversight there were two further underlying sub-expectations – valuation oversight and investment restrictions and leverage limits oversight. For safekeeping there were also two underlying sub-expectations – due diligence obligations on safekeeping/asset segregation and delegation arrangements.

The peer review targeted five EU jurisdictions – Czech Republic, Ireland, Italy, Luxembourg and Sweden.

Report

The report notes that the five jurisdictions had differing approaches toward depositary supervision. While competent authorities in each jurisdiction had processes and procedures in place regarding the supervision of depositary obligations, there were significant differences in how these were applied in practice.

The report recommends that the competent authorities enhance their approach to depositary supervision, so that risks inherent in their activities are adequately identified, assessed and mitigated. All of the competent authorities that were assessed are expected to consider implementing more frequent and intrusive engagement to higher impact entities and move closer to a true risk-based supervisory approach.

Next steps

While the peer review covered five EU competent authorities, all EU competent authorities could consider the report’s findings, recommendations and good practices in the context of their supervisory framework.