The last sentence of Article 35 (“In particular, the coordinator should assess the impact of the capital adequacy of each conglomerate’s entity (be it a single entity or a subgroup) on the overall capital adequacy at the level of the financial conglomerate”) should be clarified and aligned with the provisions of the FICO directive or, alternatively, it should be deleted since it might raise interpretations issues. Moreover, this sentence goes beyond the mandate provided at Article 11 of the financial conglomerate directive which does not require a supplementary capital adequacy test or assessment on top of the supplementary supervision.

Article 34 may possibly lead to level-playing field issues: sectoral rules and any supervisory assessment performed at sectoral level should apply in the same way to all banks and insurers, whether they are part of a financial conglomerate or not. That article, which provides with a reassessment of capital adequacy at sectoral level when dealing with a financial conglomerate (“If available, the [sectoral] assessment should include: (a) an evaluation of the quality of each entity’s capital, considering potential material restrictions on its transferability; and (b) regulatory constraints that may arise at solo/subconsolidated level”), should be deleted since, on the one hand, it pertains to sectoral regulation and, on the other hand, transferability and availability of capital at the financial conglomerate level are already dealt with at Article 4 of the aforementioned delegated act relating to the supplementary supervision of financial conglomerate.

To harmonise supervisory practices with regard to capital adequacy assessment, the guidelines should clarify that regulatory capital instruments issued by an institution and subscribed by life-insurance policyholders in a life-insurance company that is included in the scope of the FICO supervision, do not need to be deducted to the extent that the related risks are unconditionally transferred to policyholders and that they are not subject to any guarantee nor any arrangement that enhance the seniority of the claim.

We suggest clarifying the wording used at article 54 (“emergency planning / emergency plans”). It is indeed unclear whether it actually refers to recovery and resolutions plans, to liquidity contingency planning or to business contingency planning.

Finally, as mentioned in the general comments above, we recommend clarifying that the guidelines will also apply as part of the SSM and setting out the applicable arrangements for the practical cooperation between the SSM, the supervisory colleges (where they exist) and the national competent authorities.

The ESAs have estimated that “no significant costs for institutions are expected”. However, it is our view that existing regulatory requirements should be used to the largest extent, especially those on intra-group transactions and on concentrations.

Besides, article 25 provides that “the coordinator should agree with the other competent authorities on the frequency, formats and templates for the regular exchange of information. Templates should be agreed on between coordinator and the competent authorities, in particular for the gathering of information on risk concentration and intra-group transactions”. We highly recommend to systematically consult with financial conglomerates on regular exchanges of information in case additional data need to be provided by financial conglomerates.