Full disclosure should be mandatory for crypto companies: FSB report

Companies offering crypto assets and related services should be subject to strong but fair regulations, and need to disclose to clients their governance framework, operations, risk profiles and financial conditions, a report by the global organization Financial Safety Board (FSB) has recommended.

The FSB made its final report on global cryptocurrency regulations public on Monday. It had been tasked by G-20 to frame these regulations in 2022. Many countries, including India, have publicly stated that crypto assets require regulation at an international level, and they won’t bring their own laws governing the digital assets unless the likes of FSB and International Monetary Fund (IMF) come out with their own recommendations.

A combined IMF-FSB report will be submitted to G-20 nations ahead of the meeting of the Heads of States in September in New Delhi.

“Authorities should require that crypto-asset issuers and service providers disclose to users and relevant stakeholders comprehensive, clear and transparent information regarding their governance framework, operations, risk profiles and financial conditions, as well as the products they provide and activities they conduct,” the FSB stated in its recommendations.

The report stated that governments and central banks should have the necessary powers and legislations in place to regulate the crypto-asset activities and markets, and that the supervision should be on a functional basis and proportionate to the financial stability risk they pose, in line with the principle “same activity, same risk, same regulation”.

It said that countries should cooperate and coordinate with each other and share information to encourage consistency of regulation, and that the crypto-asset issuers and service providers should have a comprehensive governance and risk management frameworks with clear and direct lines of responsibility and accountability for all functions and activities they are conducting.

“The framework should be proportionate to the risk, size, complexity, and systemic importance, and to the financial stability risk that may be posed by the activity or market in which they are participating,” it said.

The FSB report stated that governments should require companies in the crypto space to have robust frameworks for collecting, storing, safeguarding, and the timely and accurate reporting of data, and that authorities should have access to the data.