AMF Tightens Oversight on Asset Manager Staff to Protect Investors

AMF tightens oversight on asset manager staff to protect investors – a regulatory revision sets stricter standards for staffing and supervision across firms. This results from inspections at five companies with a combined total of over €500 million in assets, conducted between January 2021 and February 2025.

AMF France and Sustainable Finance: Fragmentation and Limited Applicability

AMF France has published the results of its lengthy inspection assessing staff knowledge at asset management companies, covering five firms with a combined total of over €500 million in assets, and conducted between January 2021 and February 2025. 

The inspections revealed that internal certification procedures often fall short of AMF’s general standards in terms of rigor. More specifically:

• Companies do not always document who is subject to examination and based on which criteria, and the procedures themselves are often not defined in agreements between the management company and the training provider.
• There are no standardized approaches for the format, duration, or conditions under which internal examinations are conducted.
• Internal pass rates were found to be lower compared to the AMF exam, indicating a potentially weaker set of requirements.
• In some cases, there was no clear distinction between employees subject to basic knowledge verification and those whose roles require extended competency assessments.

As a consequence, the AMF has announced a revision to Position DOC-2009-29 and has formally defined the expected standards for internal knowledge verification systems. The regulator now requires that internal exams match the level of strictness and transparency applied in AMF’s own certification processes. Specifically, companies must designate responsible parties and define eligibility criteria, examination conditions, and methods for recording results. These requirements will be mandatory for all asset management companies as of January 1, 2026.

This is particularly relevant for crypto ETFs, which continue to accumulate capital and expand the range of financial instruments they offer. As a result, stricter certification standards may increasingly apply to them as well – a development that could benefit investors. At the same time, it may raise operating costs for funds, potentially increasing service fees for investors and prompting shifts in how services are structured and delivered.

Naturally, one of the most direct and reliable ways to avoid additional regulatory layers remains self-management and investment, where you make your own decisions and retain full ownership of the outcomes.

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Conclusion

We are witnessing a rapidly evolving financial landscape, expanding through new digital assets and instruments. At the same time, European financial regulators – alongside those in the US and the UK – are stepping up efforts to provide stable regulatory frameworks. Whether these responses will be timely and which jurisdictions’ approaches will ultimately serve investors best remains to be seen. Stay tuned for the latest updates in crypto, blockchain, and regulation.