Approximately 85% of the fund groups surveyed in Rsrchxchange’s online poll, admitted that they would not be compliant with the incoming regulation before the final quarter of this year, despite the fact that Mifid II will come into effect in 3 January 2018.
The survey, conducted by polling company Survation, includes the views of 562 respondents from over 450 different asset managers, predominantly in Europe and with assets under management ranging from $100bn to sub $1bn.
At present, it is one of the largest surveys of investor sentiment on the impending regulation available and surpasses the firm’s 2016 survey sample size of 234 respondents.
The report specifically focuses on the research unbundling component of the new regulation.
Under Mifid II, investment firms must decide whether they want to fund research themselves or continue to charge investors via a research payment account.
Firms who choose the latter route have to set a budget and provide audit trails of costs and payments made to research providers.
Although, year-on-year, the research provider saw an increased awareness from the respondents surveyed, on new requirements like research unbundling, there was also a “significant slippage” in terms of timing for compliance.
Since Q2 2016, the number of respondents expected to be compliant during the last quarter of 2017 and 2018 has grown from 50% to 85%.
The aggregator and institutional research provider speculated that one of the reasons for this “slippage” could be because 54% of fund groups feel they don’t have enough information on the research unbundling process.
