Closing speech by Marie-Anne Barbat-Layani, AMF Chair - 20 years of the Autorité des Marchés Financiers - Thursday 23 November 2023

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Ladies and Gentlemen,
Dear friends,

We have come to the end of our discussions, and it's now my turn to give the closing speech.

First of all, I would like to extend my sincere thanks to all the speakers who, each in their own way, retraced the history of the AMF and helped to outline the issues that will guide our action in the future.

When the AMF was set up 20 years ago, Francis Mer highlighted the public authorities' ambition, through the Law on Financial Security: to have an "effective and powerful authority, both nationally and internationally".

Francis Mer wanted a "vigilant market control tower" with "all the resources it needs to act firmly and swiftly".

He also wanted to make France's regulatory system clearer, thereby enabling the AMF to "carry greater weight on the international stage". He wanted the AMF to be fully independent, and this is obviously essential.

In 2023, this vision continues to guide our actions.

But we are also faced with a radically different context, the main feature of which is undoubtedly the acceleration of change and its multiplicity. That is why we wanted to take a closer look at the role of the regulator in this changing world, by giving the floor to multidisciplinary speakers from different countries.

The world has changed in the last 20 years. It would be difficult to list all the developments that affect us as regulators, but here are a few:

• We have experienced major financial and non-financial crises - I'm thinking of the Covid 19 pandemic - which have led to equally major tightening of financial regulations and have highlighted the issue of financial stability, which is now one of the AMF's missions. This is all the more important as non-bank finance has grown considerably;
• European regulations have expanded considerably and have become the main source of our work;
• Brexit has had a fundamental impact. The London financial centre was the "financial lung" of the European Union. It is now up to continental Europe to take its destiny in this area into its own hands;
• Faced with the acceleration of climate change, the "greening" of finance has become a major challenge, one that France is taking up more than any other country;
• The impact of digitalisation and, more recently, artificial intelligence on the financial sector and on savers is considerable;
• Lastly, we are facing societal upheavals: in consumption patterns, as well as in information systems. Gilles Finchelstein gave an overview earlier when he highlighted the paradoxical difficulty, for an institution based on expertise, to inspire confidence.

Being a regulator in this world characterised by multiple, rapid and structural changes means constantly exercising your curiosity, being open and listening to all stakeholders, anticipating and challenging yourself to understand developments and their impact, without preconceptions, and taking clear and judicious positions.

On a more cyclical level, we also have to take account of a complex macroeconomic environment, currently marked by the return of inflation and rising interest rates.

We need to anticipate and identify the risks so that we can adapt our actions and supervisory priorities and send the right signals to the marketplace.

To the role of "control tower" set out by Francis Mer, I therefore add the role of compass.

A few words about our strategic priorities for the period 2023-2027

There are six of them, reflecting both our commitment to our DNA and our ability to adapt to these new challenges. Our ambition is to:

• be a demanding regulator for Europe's leading financial centre;
• have strong international and European action;
• protect investors and savers;
• promote more sustainable finance;
• support innovation;
• and, as the essential foundation of our action, be an attractive and efficient authority for our employees, serving the general interest.

Our first strategic focus is to be:

A demanding regulator serving the European Union's leading financial centre.

This priority reflects a strong conviction: the quality and stringency of regulation are assets for the development of a financial centre. The development of the Paris financial centre bears witness to this.

The AMF is thus affirming its position as a demanding regulator that is attentive to the attractiveness of the financial centre.

It is the French vision of finance that we want to promote, a finance that is honest and useful, serving the real economy.

The regulator's demands are met by using and adapting all our tools: monitoring, surveillance, supervision, controls and, where necessary, sanctions.

We also demand this of ourselves, by avoiding over-regulation and, in particular, over-transposition of European legislation.

This is the spirit in which we are approaching, for example, the forthcoming implementation of the European rules on long-term investment funds, known as "ELTIF 2", and we will be present to contribute to all the work on the attractiveness of the Paris financial centre mentioned by the Director General of the Treasury.

We believe that the competitiveness of the Paris financial centre is essential to the financing of our economy and its transition to a model that is both more sustainable and more innovative. As we know, this requires considerable investment: we therefore need a powerful and useful financial sector to meet these objectives.

We also need a solid financial sector to ensure the strategic autonomy of France and the European Union.

Given its weight within the European Union, the Paris financial centre has a primary responsibility in this area.

This first strategic priority thus finds its natural extension in our European and international action.

"Strong international action": this is how we have defined our second strategic priority

I am delighted that more and more people are speaking out following the French and German finance ministers calling for the relaunch of the Capital Markets Union. This is a major challenge for Europe, as Stéphanie Yon-Courtin pointed out.

The AMF is committed to making proposals and supporting initiatives aimed at relaunching the Capital Markets Union. In this context, I would remind you that we are calling for a strengthening of the role of the European Securities and Markets Authority, ESMA, whose Chair, Verena Ross, has just addressed us.

The markets need to develop to meet Europe's financial needs, which are, as in France, to finance the energy transition and the digital transition, and to ensure Europe's strategic autonomy in terms of financing.

Beyond the Capital Markets Union, we have set ourselves two priorities at European level: to contribute to the quality of regulation and to encourage the convergence of supervisory practices on a demanding basis. This is the reason for our commitment to ESMA.

Internationally, the challenges of financial stability and the development of innovations are at the heart of IOSCO's work. Jean-Paul Servais, its Chair, reminded us of its role. The AMF will continue to be closely involved in this work.

I'd now like to turn to our third strategic priority: protecting savers, which is actually our top priority.

We don't protect savers and investors like we did in the past, in an age of social media, influencers, gamification and artificial intelligence.

This is a real challenge for the AMF, which must adapt its tools, resources and way of thinking to this new environment.

In order to be more effective, we first need to understand them better: that's why we have just commissioned the OECD, with the support of the European Commission, to produce a portrait of "new investors".

We are seeing two interesting trends: a younger investor base and a real revival of interest in investment.

The aim of this highly instructive work is to adapt our financial education initiatives. This is a question of knowing how to address investors who get their information mainly from social media and influencers. This fully justifies our efforts to provide a better framework for "finfluencers".

Another key finding of the OECD study is that half of new investors have invested in cryptoassets.

This is a major development for the AMF, which, along with the ACPR, has been responsible for regulating this sector since the PACTE Law. It highlights the need to support digital asset service providers as they prepare for the implementation of a more stringent and investor-protective regulation under the European MICA Regulation.

We are already taking part in discussions on regulations more suited to the global players in the crypto world, which could take the form of a "MICA 2" regulation in Europe.

We also need to strengthen our monitoring capabilities and tools to combat scams more effectively.

To do this, we want to broaden the possibilities for using assumed identities and equip ourselves with monitoring and supervision tools for social media that allow us to use public data automatically. We hope that a legislative vehicle can soon be found to support this major development.

I would now like to turn to our fourth priority: promoting more sustainable finance.

The energy transition is a collective priority and an absolute priority. As the second roundtable discussion made clear, expectations are very high.

In order to meet these expectations, the quality of the information provided is key. But it is important to establish a common language beforehand. What is a sustainable activity? What is a sustainable investment? And how can you be sure that an investment described as green really is green?

From this point of view, regulations are advancing rapidly. We are preparing for a real revolution with the implementation of the Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive (CSRD), which is one of the cornerstones of the European Commission's European Green Deal. This regulation introduces much more stringent transparency requirements, including on climate transition plans, and mandatory third-party verification of information. This is a major development, which should eventually bring the quality of non-financial reporting closer to that of corporate financial reporting.

In the financial sector, investors are looking for clear points of reference. This has led to high expectations in terms of the labelling of financial products.

In the world of investment funds, the work carried out at national level on the SRI label, like that undertaken by ESMA on fund names, should make it possible to better meet investors' expectations. This will also be a major issue in the review of the SFDR regulation.

As regulator, we are responsible for ensuring that sustainable finance regulations are properly implemented, using all the tools at our disposal, including the fight against greenwashing.

We implement this objective on a daily basis, through our supervisory activities, which are invisible but the importance of which should not be underestimated. The aim is to ensure that the information is accurate, genuine and not misleading. We obviously do not rule out the option of sanctions in the event of a proven breach of regulations.

In addition, against a backdrop of rapidly advancing regulations that are sometimes incomplete or complex, we are working hard with financial players to educate, clarify and inform them about the applicable rules.

We have just published our second study on Taxonomy Reporting for listed non-financial companies. We hope that these findings will encourage companies to improve their efforts to communicate the sustainability of their activities.

We also conduct thematic controls for educational purposes, often as part of common supervisory actions coordinated by the ESMA. Last June, we published the results of a series of controls designed to ensure that investment management companies are meeting their contractual commitments on sustainability.

Therefore, we are making our expectations public, which means that we are not trying to catch anyone out, but that it is announced that there is a radar at the side of the road, and that the police are not far away.

Earlier, I mentioned the innovation-friendly DNA of the AMF. In our strategic plan, we strongly reaffirmed our position as a regulator open to innovation. Supporting innovation is our fifth major priority.

This is reflected in regular dialogue with the innovation ecosystem and the development of strong skills by AMF teams. We are currently looking at a number of issues, including open access to financial data, decentralised finance and, increasingly, the artificial intelligence mentioned by Gary Gensler. This is a source of opportunities. We ourselves are already using artificial intelligence-based tools for market supervision, and we are measuring their effectiveness.

It can also be a source of new risks, particularly for financial stability, which we are working on with our counterparts at IOSCO.

Our final strategic direction relates to our own organisation: to be an attractive and efficient authority for its employees, serving the public interest.

Although this is our "essential foundation", I won't go into it in detail, because Francis Mer stressed the importance of giving the AMF the means to meet its objectives when it was created... and this has obviously not changed.

With our strategic orientations, which I have just outlined, we have set ourselves a strong ambition: to be a high-impact regulator. In fact, this is the name we have given to our strategic plan: "Impact 2027".

In order to meet the objectives set 20 years ago, the AMF must continue to develop. Today, it is a recognised and respected regulator, both in France and internationally.

Its remit has expanded, including the regulation of sustainable finance and cryptoassets, which obviously did not exist when it was created. The AMF has also become the regulator of Europe's leading financial centre. This is a great achievement and a huge responsibility.

We owe this success first and foremost to the quality of the AMF's teams, who are the "essential foundation" that I mentioned. Their expertise is recognised, and I would like to salute them today.

In order to fulfil our mission as an independent public authority serving the general interest and to keep pace with the development of our missions, we must be able to adapt our governance, organisation, tools and human and financial resources on an ongoing basis.

At Bercy today, I would like to thank the Minister Bruno Le Maire for the recognition given to the AMF in the Finance Law, through an increase in its budgetary resources and its employment ceiling, which is all the more remarkable given the scarcity of public resources, but which remains modest given the scope of our missions.

And I hope that the Ministry of the Economy and Finance, and more broadly the public authorities, will continue to be attentive to giving the AMF the resources it needs to fulfil its missions in the years to come.

We have had a lovely anniversary, I think.

Let me conclude with a Chinese proverb: "The best time to plant a tree was 20 years ago. The second-best time is now". The tree has been planted, let's wish it a bright future!

Thank you for your attention.