The European Securities and Markets Authority (ESMA) today (16 July) launched a consultation on draft technical standards to set out the criteria for how investment firms establish and assess the effectiveness of their order execution policies.
The objective of the proposed technical standards is to foster investor protection by enhancing investment firms’ order execution.
ESMA is seeking stakeholder input on the establishment of an investment firm’s order execution policy. This includes the classification of financial instruments in which firms execute client orders and the initial selection of venues for the order execution policy.
It is also looking into the investment firm’s procedures to monitor and regularly assess the effectiveness of its order execution arrangements and order execution policy and the investment firm’s execution of client orders through own account dealing; and on
how an investment firm should deal with client instructions.
ESMA said it will consider all comments received by 16 October 2024.
ESMA will then prepare the final report for subsequent submission of the final draft technical standards to the European Commission.
