On 10 June 2020, a proposal to amend the Financial Supervision Funding Decree 2019 (Besluit bekostiging financieel toezicht 2019) was published for public consultation.
This proposal will change the distribution of the supervisory costs of the Netherlands Authority for the Financial Markets (Autoriteit Financiële Markten, the AFM) among the different supervisory categories. Back in 2019 the distribution of the supervisory costs for the AFM was revised, as it became clear that the AFM needed additional structural resources due to the extension of its supervisory tasks as a result of Brexit. It was expected that Brexit could lead to a large portion of trading in financial instruments being moved to the Netherlands. Therefore, the cost framework for the AFM was increased for 2019 and 2020 to accommodate for IT-related investments and a number of extra supervisors. In particular, the costs allocated to the financial infrastructure category were significantly increased.
Seeing that those investments were one-off and will no longer be relevant in 2021, and the AFM having taken a critical look at the required structural resources for the financial infrastructure category, the supervisory costs will now be reduced. The most significant change concerns financial infrastructure category, as the percentage allocated to this category is reduced from 8.7 per cent to 3.7 per cent. Although this is a significant reduction, the percentage is still higher than it was before Brexit. The redistribution means that the percentages allocated to most other supervisory categories will slightly increase.
The consultation period ends on 7 July 2020.