The Dutch Authority for the Financial Markets has sent its annual legislative letter to the Ministers of Finance and of Social Affairs and Employment, setting out targeted changes it wants to the current legal framework to support more future-proof financial supervision. The proposals combine tighter requirements where the AFM sees consumer or public-interest risks and simplifications where it sees unnecessary administrative burden. On pensions, the AFM wants a sharper legal standard for information supplied to Stichting Pensioenregister, citing cases where data shown to participants via Mijn Pensioenoverzicht and its API is not always correct or up to date and where current rules do not sufficiently ensure timeliness and accuracy. For regulated markets, it proposes introducing threshold “bandwidths” in the declaration of no objection regime so that, after the existing 10% trigger, further increases within specified thresholds (for example 20%, 30% and 50%) would not require a new approval each time. For the audit profession, it calls for reintroducing the requirement for the Minister of Finance to approve professional regulations affecting statutory audits by audit firms, noting the potential for conflicts given the Netherlands Institute of Chartered Accountants’ combined standard-setting and advocacy roles and that the approval requirement applied until 2019. For listed issuers, it proposes removing the national duplicate transaction reporting obligation for directors and supervisory board members so that only the EU regime would apply, which includes a EUR 20,000 annual threshold, while indicating that the transparency impact warrants broad consultation before such a change. The AFM’s legislative letter was sent to the House of Representatives alongside De Nederlandsche Bank’s legislative letter.

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