ESMA Remuneration Guidelines: UCITS and AIFMD

Of relevance to:
UCITS management companies and AIFMs

UCITS V introduced the concept of remuneration policies and practices for management companies – see Regulatory Roundup 75 for details of ESMA’s final report on UCITS remuneration guidelines. The UCITS Remuneration Code is, of course, captured in SYSC 19E of the Handbook.

The ‘official’ guidelines have now been published by ESMA (2016/575).

The guidelines apply from 1 January 2017 i.e. they first apply for the calculation of payments relating to new awards of variable remuneration to identified staff from the first full performance period commencing after 1 January 2017. The document provides an example of a management company whose accounting period ends on 31 December. In this instance the management company should apply the guidelines to payments relating to the 2017 accounting period.

ESMA also released an amendment to the AIFMD Remuneration Guidelines. However, the document is a modest one-page as it simply amends the guidelines for AIFMs that are part of a group.