News

Today, 19.01.2021, the Latvian Capital Market Forum 2021 "Today's Decisions = Future Opportunities" took place online during which the Financial and Capital Market Commission (FCMC) presented a 10-step programme for the development of Latvia's capital market. The programme entails the measures to be taken to enhance the role of the State, capacity-building for issuers and investment promotion.

The European Central Bank (ECB) has decided to classify "Citadele banka" AS as a significant credit institution, commencing its direct supervision on 1 January 2021. In future, the ECB will exercise direct supervision over three of Latvia's largest banks within the Single Supervisory Mechanism (SSM) of the European Union (EU) banking union.

In 2020, the Financial and Capital Market Commission (FCMC) carried out 12 inspections of banks in the area of the prevention of money laundering and terrorism and proliferation financing and concluded that generally banks had taken substantial steps to improve internal control systems. In previous years, most of bank inspections resulted in administrative proceedings and imposition of fines, while in 2020 there were only a few cases where the FCMC had to decide on administrative proceedings or the application of sanctions.

On 19 January 2021, Latvian Capital Market Forum 2021 "Today's Decisions = Future Opportunities" will be held online, in which the Financial and Capital Market Commission (FCMC) will present a 10-step programme for the development of Latvia's capital market and discuss the implementation of the programme and the challenges of Latvia's capital market with industry experts and opinion leaders.

Sustainability issues have to be the key themes in Latvia's financial sector already at this moment, therefore the Financial and Capital Market Commission (FCMC) has started work on introducing sustainability aspects into the supervision and development of the financial sector, as well as in the FCMC's activities. The FCMC also calls upon industry to more actively focus on the sustainability and green finance aspects.

The Board of the Financial and Capital Market Commission (hereinafter – the FCMC) on 03.11.2020 decided to impose a fine of EUR 473 076 on AS "Reģionālā investīciju banka" (hereinafter – the Bank) for irregularities in detecting the source of funds, which were identified during the FCMC's inspection in the large value cash transactions carried out by the Bank's high-risk clients from high-risk jurisdictions. Accordingly, the Bank failed to ensure adequate risk management and was exposed to disproportionate reputational risk.

SIA XHEERO is the first financial technology company approved in the Innovation Sandbox of the Financial and Capital Market Commission (FCMC) to test RegTech (regulatory technology) solutions developed by the company in the area of anti-money laundering and combating terrorism and proliferation financing. The company has also drafted a plan for testing the technical solution and agreed it with the FCMC.

On October 27, the Financial and Capital Market Commission (FCMC) joined the EFDI Sustainability Charter on Sustainable Deposit Guarantee and Investor Compensation Schemes. Thus the FCMC has undertaken to strengthen best corporate governance practices in the operation of the Deposit Guarantee Fund (DGF).

On 8 October 2020, the Law Firm COBALT in partnership with Finance Latvia Association organized an online event "Baltic FinReg Summit 2020" in order to analyze the current situation in financial and capital markets, regulatory issues and other relevant topics.

The Financial and Capital Market Commission (FCMC) has prepared an infographic summarizing the performance of the Latvian banking sector in the first half of 2020. The data show that in general the banking sector is profitable. However, compared to the previous period the overall profit has declined because the banks made provisions as a preventive measure with a view to limiting the negative effects of the Covid-19 pandemic.