Search for Q&As

Enquirers can use various factors to search for a Q&A:

  • These include searching by the Q&A ID; legal reference, date submitted, technical standard / guideline, or by keyword if known.
  • Searches can be extended to more than one legal act, topic, technical standard or guidelines by making multiple selections (i.e. pressing 'Ctrl' on your keyboard, and selecting the relevant ones from the drop-down lists by left mouse-click).

Disclaimer:

Q&As refer to the provisions in force on the day of their publication. The EBA does not systematically review published Q&As following the amendment of legislative acts. Users of the Q&A tool should therefore check the date of publication of the Q&A and whether the provisions referred to in the answer remain the same.

Please note that the Q&As related to the supervisory benchmarking exercises have been moved to the dedicated handbook page. You can submit Q&As on this topic here.

List of Q&A's

Safeguarding requirements

Are transactions where both the payer and the payee are outside the EEA (e.g. a transfer between China and Hong Kong) outside the scope of the safeguarding requirements or not?

  • Legal act: Directive 2015/2366/EU (PSD2)
  • COM Delegated or Implementing Acts/RTS/ITS/GLs: Not applicable

Interpretation of payment instrument

What devices or procedures can be considered as payment instrument as per Art. 4(14) of PSD2.

  • Legal act: Directive 2015/2366/EU (PSD2)
  • COM Delegated or Implementing Acts/RTS/ITS/GLs: Not applicable

Roles that can be assigned to electronic money institutions in certificates

Please clarify which roles may be assigned to electronic money institutions (EU 2015/2366 Art 1(1) b) by qualified trust service providers (QTSPs) in the certificates. There seems to be some contradiction between EU 2015/2366 Art 11(1) and the EBA Opinion on the use of eIDAS certificates under the RTS on SCA and CSC (EBA-Op-2018-7) item 26.

  • Legal act: Directive 2015/2366/EU (PSD2)
  • COM Delegated or Implementing Acts/RTS/ITS/GLs: Not applicable

The amount of a card payment transaction authorised online in HRK

Please clarify for card payment transactions authorised by the Payment Services User (PSU) in Member State A’s currency online on a web shop of an EU merchant that has an domain extension of Member State A, but that is not a Member State A merchant.The payment service provider is an EU acquirer (not from Member State A).The Member State A’s Payment Services Provider (PSP) issuing the payment card charges the PSU a different amount in Member State A’s currency (different from the amount that has been authorised).The difference between the original and charged amounts is caused by a currency conversion due to a card transactions settlement in another currency (EUR, USD, etc.) in the Payment Scheme.

  • Legal act: Directive 2015/2366/EU (PSD2)
  • COM Delegated or Implementing Acts/RTS/ITS/GLs: Not applicable

Requirement for credit institutions and electronic money institutions wishing to offer PIS and AIS to take out professional indemnity insurance or a comparable guarantee / Obbligo di dotarsi di un'assicurazione per la responsabilità civile o analoga garanzia, per gli Enti creditizi o Istituti di moneta elettronica che vogliono offrire i servizi di PIS e AIS

Can an electronic money institution or a credit institution wishing to offer Payment Initiation Service (PIS) and Account information service (AIS) consider its own funds to be a guarantee that is comparable to professional indemnity insurance (PII)?***IT:   Un Istituto di Moneta elettronica o un Ente creditizio che vuole offrire i servizi di PIS e AIS, può considerare i fondi propri come analoga garanzia rispetto all’assicurazione per la responsabilità civile professionale? 

  • Legal act: Directive 2015/2366/EU (PSD2)
  • COM Delegated or Implementing Acts/RTS/ITS/GLs: EBA/GL/2017/08 - Guidelines on the criteria on how to stipulate the minimum monetary amount of the professional indemnity insurance

Surcharging

Is a ‘foreign exchange margin’ or 'currency conversion fee'  different from a ‘surcharge’ and do different foreign exchange margins above the ECB mid-market rate not constitute a surcharge?

  • Legal act: Directive 2015/2366/EU (PSD2)
  • COM Delegated or Implementing Acts/RTS/ITS/GLs: Not applicable

Immediate Refund by the Payment Service Provider of unauthorised SEPA Direct Debit transactions after 8 weeks.

Our question is related to ‘unauthorised’ transactions, and as from when it is qualified as unauthorised? Is this as soon as any payment service user claims that the transaction is unauthorised?   -Or is this as soon as the payment service provider analysed if the transaction is really unauthorised?

  • Legal act: Directive 2015/2366/EU (PSD2)
  • COM Delegated or Implementing Acts/RTS/ITS/GLs: Not applicable

Potential inconsistency on the application of Strong Customer Authentication exemptions to AISPs

Shall Account Servicing Payment Service Providers (ASPSPs) always grant Account Information Service Provider (AISPs) to be exempted from Strong Customer Authentication (SCA) according to rules defined in Article 10 of the RTS on strong customer authentication and secure communication (Delegated Regulation (EU) 2018/389), or is the final decision to apply such exemption always up to the ASPSP?

  • Legal act: Directive 2015/2366/EU (PSD2)
  • COM Delegated or Implementing Acts/RTS/ITS/GLs: Regulation (EU) 2018/389 - RTS on strong customer authentication and secure communication

90 Day Access via Direct Access

Should any solution which involves direct access, whether as a strategic solution to PSD2, or in relation to the obligation to provide a fallback interface, ensure that Account Information Service Providers (AISPs) can access the interface in the same manner as the dedicated interface, specifically on an ongoing basis and for a maximum of 90 days once the customer has provided consent and authenticated using strong customer authentication (SCA)?

  • Legal act: Directive 2015/2366/EU (PSD2)
  • COM Delegated or Implementing Acts/RTS/ITS/GLs: Regulation (EU) 2018/389 - RTS on strong customer authentication and secure communication

Available financial means

Are all the financial means referred in Article 10 of DGSD available to finance measures to preserve the access of depositors to covered deposits according to Article 11.6 of DGSD?

  • Legal act: Directive 2014/49/EU (DGSD)
  • COM Delegated or Implementing Acts/RTS/ITS/GLs: Not applicable

Definition of available cash for the purpose of determining intraday qualifying liquid resources in accordance with Regulation (EU) 2017/390 Art. 34(b)

For the purpose of determining intraday qualifying liquid resources according to Regulation (EU) 2017/390 Art. 34, to what extent does “available cash” mentioned in Art. 34(b) include balances on nostro accounts held “at one of the creditworthy financial institutions identified in Article 38(1)”?

  • Legal act: Regulation (EU) No 909/2014 (CSDR) - only RTS 2017/390
  • COM Delegated or Implementing Acts/RTS/ITS/GLs: Regulation (EU) 2017/390 - RTS on prudential requirements of CSDs (CSDR-related)

Clarification of the requirement to establish concentration limits on liquidity providers and establish at least two arrangements for each major currency.

In conjunction with REGULATION (EU) No 909/2014 Article 59(4)(e), does Regulation (EU) 2017/390 Article 38(5) stipulate a requirement to have at least two arrangements in place in each major currency to convert collateral or assets into cash using prearranged and highly reliable funding only? Does the requirement to establish concentration limits and to have at least two arrangements in place include alternative liquidity arrangements such as committed unsecured lines of credit or committed FX swap facilities?

  • Legal act: Regulation (EU) No 909/2014 (CSDR) - only RTS 2017/390
  • COM Delegated or Implementing Acts/RTS/ITS/GLs: Regulation (EU) 2017/390 - RTS on prudential requirements of CSDs (CSDR-related)

Highly reliable prearranged funding arrangements

Problem Article 59 (4) EBA-RTS and Article 38 (6) (b) EBA RTS do not specify if these arrangements require committed agreements in place, or if uncommitted facilities such as Global Master Repurchase Agreements (GMRAs) or access to CCP repo trading are sufficient. According to our knowledge there is also no definition of “prearranged arrangements” in the relevant European Banking legislation (particularly not in the CRD IV/CRR). Furthermore there is ample evidence that repo arrangements against high quality securities have proven highly reliable and liquid throughout the financial crisis. In addition, repo transactions through a centralised order book and CCP cleared (such as for example the Eurex Repo GC Pooling services), have also proven to be a preferred market option in particular in times of market stress.

  • Legal act: Regulation (EU) No 909/2014 (CSDR) - only RTS 2017/390
  • COM Delegated or Implementing Acts/RTS/ITS/GLs: Regulation (EU) 2017/390 - RTS on prudential requirements of CSDs (CSDR-related)

EBA Benchmarking Exercise - C103 - RWA + RWA - RWA ++ RWA --

In order to achieve (RWA + RWA - RWA ++ RWA --) to fill in template C103 of EBA Benchmarking Exercise, when we do not have exposure in the previous year, i.e., in the formula when n = 0, which p- value should we consider?

  • Legal act: Directive 2013/36/EU (CRD)
  • COM Delegated or Implementing Acts/RTS/ITS/GLs: Draft ITS on Supervisory Reporting of Institutions (for benchmarking the internal approaches)

Granularity required for reference data required

Should we list every reference data attached to an instrument,or a subset of reference data?

  • Legal act: Directive 2013/36/EU (CRD)
  • COM Delegated or Implementing Acts/RTS/ITS/GLs: Regulation (EU) 2016/2070 - ITS on Supervisory Reporting (for benchmarking the internal approaches) (as amended)

Definition of Rating and Date of most recent rating of counterparty

How is the rating and date of most recent rating of counterparty to be reported, in case there is an actual exposure but no valid rating available anymore?

  • Legal act: Directive 2013/36/EU (CRD)
  • COM Delegated or Implementing Acts/RTS/ITS/GLs: Draft ITS on Supervisory Reporting of Institutions (for benchmarking the internal approaches)

Default Rate calculation

As part of the implementation of IFRS9 on the 1st of Jan 2018 banks may have also implemented a new Definition of Default. A new definition could result in a large uplift in default stock. However, by virtue of the way that new defaults are captured in COREP, the impact of this is that ‘New Defaults’ for the year could be artifically inflated by this stock adjustment due to the newly implemented definition. This inflated default rate is not representative of real ‘New Defaults’ in the year. Should default rate be reported in the data submission as reported in COREP or should the default rate by adjusted to mitigate the effects of the implementation of the new definition of default (i.e. by removing the stock adjustment facilities from the ‘New Defaults’ population and from the start of year performing population and calculate what we believe is the real 1 year default rate)? If no adjustment is made, this will distort default rate values.

  • Legal act: Directive 2013/36/EU (CRD)
  • COM Delegated or Implementing Acts/RTS/ITS/GLs: Draft ITS on Supervisory Reporting of Institutions (for benchmarking the internal approaches)

Supervisory Benchmarking Exercise 2019: RWA- and RWA --

For the purpose of Template C103 institutions shall report RWA- and RWA--. According to the corresponding instructions (Annex IV), RWA- and RWA-- result from the application of PD- and PD-- (instead of the institution’s PD values). For this purpose, shall regulatory PD-floors as defined in art. 160 (1) and 163 (1) CRR be applied?

  • Legal act: Directive 2013/36/EU (CRD)
  • COM Delegated or Implementing Acts/RTS/ITS/GLs: Draft ITS on Supervisory Reporting of Institutions (for benchmarking the internal approaches)

Market risk benchmarking - specification of Long position on “Cap and Floor” 10-year UBS AG (Ticker: UBSG VX) Notes.

The specification for section 2. IR. 23, institutions shall provide IMV on a long position note issued by UBS. Should the institutions include credit risk on UBS note?

  • Legal act: Directive 2013/36/EU (CRD)
  • COM Delegated or Implementing Acts/RTS/ITS/GLs: Draft ITS on Supervisory Reporting of Institutions (for benchmarking the internal approaches)