
When I started at LBMA, 35 years after I stepped foot into the commodities markets, part of my brief was to get the Regulatory Affairs Committee (RAC) active and communicate regulatory developments to our Members.
This update covers some key developments we have seen in 2022.
This year, the RAC has welcomed four new members, all non-banks. They are Royal Canadian Mint, Asahi Refining, Mitsubishi Corp and StoneX. These additions diversify the make-up of the Committee, and hopefully provide additional perspectives and different thought processes. The Committee remains open to new members, so if you would like to get involved, please reach out to me.
On Friday, 29 July — after 6 months of work by the Global Precious Metals Code Working Group —LBMA launched its public consultation in respect of the update to the original Global Precious Metals Code (GPMC), first issued in 2018. In addition to reviewing the existing content the working group considered the following topics:
- Working from home
- Diversity and inclusion
- Physical settlement risks
- Environmental, Social and Governance (ESG) criteria
In addition, the GPMC now makes reference to the following, where appropriate:
- Financial Markets Standards Board (FMSB) papers and spotlight reviews
- Responsible Gold and Responsible Silver Guidance
- Conflict Mineral Regulation
Further to the changes proposed in the consultation, LBMA also delivered a brief, but open-ended, questionnaire giving respondents the ability to comment generally on the consultation.
REACH
Meanwhile, on the subject of REACH, LBMA is now registered with the Health and Safety Executive (HSE) as an Accredited Stakeholder. This means that LBMA will be an HSE contact point on any matters that they consult on in respect of precious metals. Naturally, for any consultation papers which are produced we will work with the RAC and wider membership to produce an appropriate response. Earlier in the year, LBMA’s Compliance team produced a REACH update and held an LBMA webinar to inform interested parties about the update. If you missed it, you can watch the webinar on our website. A further REACH webinar is being planned for Tuesday, 20 September in which we are hoping to have HSE and DEFRA present.
FMSB Spotlight Review
On Friday, 17 June 2022, FMSB issued its Precious Metals Market Post Trade Spotlight Review. This paper makes suggestions on how it believes the post trade environment could be strengthened, and followed their paper entitled Standard for the Conduct of Participants in LBMA Precious Metal Auctions, published in March 2021. This Standard, through its five Core Principles, is designed to provide some clarity as to the way in which regulatory and conduct risks can be managed, to increase the volume of bids and offers submitted to LBMA Auctions and improve the quality of price discovery resulting from them, thereby improving the effectiveness of the market.
Protecting Your Association
Here at LBMA, we have been looking at ways to protect the brand of your Association and to that end, we have implemented pro-active and re-active processes to monitor the improper use of our logo and our intellectual property. To that end, if you find such occurrences happening, please let LBMA know by emailing graham.jelf@lbma.org.uk and we can review these accordingly. This year, LBMA has reviewed its Due Diligence Policy and Processes, which has further strengthened its work in this space. Going forward, Members will be receiving periodic questionnaires from LBMA requesting up to date information, such that our data remains timely and current. Your compliance with these requests would be much appreciated.
On Thursday, 14 July, Nikhil Rathi (Chief Executive, Financial Conduct Authority), delivered a speech on how the UK will regulate for the future. As part of that speech, and rather relevant to our market, Nikhil stated how the FCA is actively participating in the work at the Federation of Small Businesses on vulnerabilities within the commodities markets.
If you would like to discuss any of the above points — or, for that matter, any other regulatory issue — please feel free to reach out to me on graham.jelf@lbma.org.uk or regulatoryaffairs@lbma.org.uk.
Best Wishes,
Graham Jelf
Compliance Officer
LBMA