On 19 February 2019, the European Securities and Markets Authority (ESMA) published its annual report and work programme to highlight its direct supervisory activities during 2018 regarding credit rating agencies (CRAs) and trade repositories (TRs) and outline its main priorities in these areas for 2019. In addition, ESMA outlines its activities regarding the monitoring and recognition of third country central counterparties (CCPs) and central security depositories (CSDs) in 2018 and going forward in 2019.

For 2019, the supervisory priorities will include:

• TR quality and access by public authorities;
• TR business continuity planning, IT process and system reliability, and information security function;
• CRA portfolio risk and quality of the rating process;
• CRA cybersecurity;
• recognition of UK CCPs in a no-deal Brexit scenario; and
• assessing the pending applications for recognition as third country CCPs and third country CSDs, including risk monitoring.