Austria Financial Market Authority published a press release from its 16th Supervisory Conference outlining the new Executive Board’s supervisory priorities, including maintaining post-Global Financial Crisis regulation while pursuing rule simplification, strengthening oversight of financial innovations under the Markets in Crypto-Assets Regulation, and continuing close monitoring of commercial real estate vulnerabilities. The Executive Board argued that Austria’s financial sector is well-capitalised and stable, and stressed that growing global uncertainty makes deregulation inappropriate even as scope exists to reduce bureaucracy through simplification work at European level, including via a European Banking Authority task force chaired by Helmut Ettl. On crypto-assets, Mariana Kühnel described Austria’s MiCAR implementation as setting a pan-European benchmark for compliance-focused supervision and said the FMA has started an initiative with other European market supervision authorities to push for more harmonised supervisory rigour across jurisdictions. The FMA also set out plans to substantially expand financial literacy and consumer information outreach, citing its analysis that four out of five clients under 24 use neo-brokerage and investment platforms. A conference survey of around 700 participants ranked geopolitical risks as the top concern (57%), followed by fears of a new euro government debt crisis (18%) and operational risks (17%), while only 6% cited real estate risks; the FMA nevertheless reiterated its focus on commercial real estate non-performing loans, pointing to the role of the systemic risk buffer and urging affected banks to reduce NPLs and assess whether risk management frameworks are adequate, with loan refinancing flagged as a continuing challenge.

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