Global Trustee and Fiduciary Services Bite-Sized Issue 8 2026

9 AIFMD CRYPTOASSETS EMIR FINTECH IOSCO MIFID II/MIFIR OPERATIONAL RESILIENCE SUSTAINABLE FINANCE/ESG T+1 ASIA PACIFIC EUROPE NORTH AMERICA UNITED KINGDOM Global Trustee and Fiduciary Services Bite-Sized | Issue 8 | 2026 Quick Links The ESAs encourage both financial entities and competent authorities to use the statement as a basis for supervisory dialogue, considering existing supervisory expectations. Such an approach would help ensuring that the EU financial system remains resilient against the risks driven by frontier AI technologies. Link to Statement here UK Financial Regulators Begin Oversight of Critical Third Parties On 13 July 2026, The Bank of England (BoE), the Prudential Regulation Authority (PRA), and the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) began overseeing the first four Critical Third Parties (CTPs), following designation by HM Treasury (HMT) on 10 July 2026. As many firms rely on these services, disruption or failure could affect multiple firms or markets at the same time, potentially impacting UK financial stability and services used by millions of consumers and businesses. The three regulators will jointly oversee these CTPs under a new, proportionate regime, focused on the resilience of the critical services they provide to the UK financial sector. The regulators will work together with the CTPs to address system‑level risks and reduce the risk of disruption to the services they provide spreading across the UK financial system. According to these regulatory authorities, this will strengthen system-wide resilience and improve coordination and information sharing across the UK financial sector. CTPs must identify and manage risks to their critical services effectively, and maintain open, timely communication with regulators and the firms that rely on them, particularly during major incidents. Link to Bank of England Announcement here Link to HM Treasury Announcement here The Value of Resilience: Cyber Resilience in Financial Services On 8 July 2026, HMT published a report detailing evidence on how cyber resilience can reduce disruption costs, support growth and strengthen financial performance inUK financial services. HMT states that the report sets out evidence on the economic and financial benefits of operational resilience, with a particular focus on cyber disruption in the financial sector, also demonstrating that stronger resilience not only reduces the likelihood and impact of disruptions, but also supports faster recovery, improved financial performance and long-term growth. HMT says the report aims to strengthen the evidence base for resilience investment by showing that resilience should be viewed as a strategic enabler of growth and stability, rather than solely as a compliance cost. Link to the Report here ESMA Launches Common Supervisory Action onCASPs’ Digital Operational Resilience for Custody 8 July 2026, the European Securities and Markets Authority (ESMA) launched a Common Supervisory Action (CSA) focusing on the digital operational resilience of Crypto-Asset Service Providers (CASPs), with a specific emphasis on custody services. ESMA says the CSA will assess the maturity of CASPs’ digital operational resilience frameworks in relation to custody activities. It will focus on risks inherent to distributed ledger technology (DLT), including governance arrangements, key and storage management, transaction controls, incident detection and response, smart contract risks, and dependencies on third-party providers. National Competent Authorities (NCAs) will carry out the exercise on a risk-based sample of authorised CASPs. The exercise will run from the second half of 2026 to the first half of 2027. ESMA says the initiative responds to its risk-based supervisory priorities, which identify both digital operational resilience and CASPs as key areas of risk. ESMA has developed this CSA to enhance supervisory convergence in a rapidly evolving segment of the market. The findings collected fromNCAs will be consolidated into a final report, which will be submitted to ESMA’s Board of Supervisors following the conclusion of the exercise in the second half of 2027.