The European Banking Authority (EBA) published today a consultation paper on draft Regulatory Technical Standards (RTS) specifying the information that crowdfunding service providers offering individual portfolio management of loans shall provide to investors in relation to the method to assess credit risk, and on each individual portfolio.
The draft Regulatory Technical Standards also specify the policies, procedures and organisational arrangements that crowdfunding service providers shall have in place in relation to any contingency fund they may offer to investors. The consultation runs until 4 September 2021.
In order to reduce the information asymmetry between crowdfunding service providers and investors, as well as to ensure transparency and adequate protection for investors, the latter should have access to all relevant information about the composition of the portfolio, including the projects where their funds are invested, as well as the quality of the loans financing these projects.
Investors are exposed not only to risks connected to the projects or the loans in which their funds are invested, but also to the way the crowdfunding service provider assesses the risk of these loans and projects and how it manages the selection of loans for the portfolio.
Against this backdrop, these draft RTS require crowdfunding service providers to show that the measurement techniques used for credit risk assessments are based on a sufficient number of elements and are appropriate to the complexity and level of the risks underlying i) the single projects; ii) the portfolio; iii) the project owners. In addition, the draft RTS set out the information that crowdfunding platforms must disclose referring to several key characteristics of each loan included in a certain portfolio.
Finally, as crowdfunding service providers may offer a dedicated contingency fund to compensate investors for the losses they may incur, in case project owners do not reimburse their loans, the draft RTS specify adequate policies, procedures and governance arrangements that providers should have in place when managing, either directly or through a third party provider, contingency funds.
Consultation process
Comments to this consultation can be sent to the EBA by clicking on the "send your comments" button on the consultation page. Please note that the deadline for the submission of comments is 4 September 2021. All contributions received will be published following the end of the consultation, unless requested otherwise.
A public hearing will be organised in the form of a webinar on 20 July 2021 from 11:00 to 12:30 CET. The EBA invites interested stakeholders to register using this link. The dial-in details will be communicated in due course.
Legal basis
These draft RTS have been developed according to Articles 6(7) of Regulation (EU) No 1503/2020 (European Crowdfunding Service Providers Regulation - ECSPR), which mandates the EBA to develop, in close cooperation with the European Securities and Market Authority (ESMA), draft RTS to specify:
the elements, including the format, that are to be included in the description of the method used for the assessment of credit risk of i) individual crowdfunding projects selected for the investor’s portfolio; ii) individual portfolios; iii) the project owners selected for the investor’s portfolio;
the information that the crowdfunding service provider should provide to investors on each individual portfolio
the policies, procedures and organisational arrangements that crowdfunding service providers are to have in place as regards any contingency funds they might offer as referred to in Art. 6(5) and Art. 6(6) of ECSPR.