On 6 May 2021, the European Commission adopted a Delegated Regulation supplementing the Benchmarks Regulation (BMR) with regard to regulatory technical standards specifying the requirements to ensure that an administrator’s governance arrangements are sufficiently robust.

The legal basis of the Delegated Regulation is Article 4(9) of the BMR as amended by Regulation (EU) 2019/2175. Under this provision, the Commission is empowered to further specify how benchmark administrators are to ensure that governance arrangements are sufficiently robust.

The layout of the Delegated Regulation is as follows:

• Article 1 defines the content of an administrator’s governance arrangements, whose organisational structure is to contain the decision-making procedures, the allocation of  functions and responsibilities, and the reporting lines.
• Article 2 specifies the persons involved with the provision of a benchmark whose responsibilities are to be defined in the governance arrangements of the administrator.
• Article 3 specifies that an administrator’s governance arrangements are to ensure a clear definition of the responsibilities allocated to the persons involved with the provision of a benchmark and the procedures which must be followed for the proper discharge of those responsibilities.

The Delegated Regulation enters into force on the twentieth day following that of its publication in the Official Journal of the European Union. It shall apply from 1 January 2022.