The Global Financial Markets Association (GFMA) is the voice for global capital markets. We bring together three of the world’s leading financial trade associations, AFME, ASIFMA and SIFMA, and represent the common interests of the world’s leading financial and capital market participants to speak for the industry on the most important global market issues.
GFMA’s Board of Directors has identified five main areas of focus. GFMA will continue its work in other capital markets and operations areas but will work in particular to be a leading association on these topics.
1. Market Fragmentation
Market fragmentation, in which market liquidity is broken up as a consequence of disparate or incompatible regulatory or supervisory requirements across regions, hinders efficiency and raises costs at which financial services and products can be delivered across jurisdictions. GFMA has been and will continue to actively feed into the G20’s work on market fragmentation, as well as contribute to ongoing monitoring by Financial Stability Board (FSB) and the International Organization of Securities Commissions (IOSCO). To support these efforts, GFMA is also a member of the CFTC Global Markets Advisory Committee and the Associate Member Consultative Committee of IOSCO.
2. Sustainable Finance
Sustainable finance is a top priority for financial institutions. GFMA is working to provide a voice for the sell-side to global and regional deliberations that seek to establish efficient frameworks for sustainable finance, mobilizing capital to support climate finance, and supporting clients to meet regulatory disclosure regimes globally by facilitating client data gathering. GFMA published two seminal reports: “Climate Finance Markets and the Real Economy, Sizing the Global Need and Defining the Market Structure to Mobilize Capital” (Dec. 2020) and “Unlocking the Potential for Carbon Markets to Achieve Net Zero” (Oct. 2021).
3. Operational Resilience, Third Party Risk Management and Data
Operational resilience is concerned with how industry participants design plans to ensure the right people, processes and communication channels are identified in advance in the event of a disruption. GFMA, in collaboration with its regional affiliates (AFME, ASIFMA and SIFMA), is working towards the development of best practices on this topic. For example, the GFMA participates in the advisory forum of the FSB work on Cyber Resilience and Format for Incident Reporting (FIRE).
4. Opportunities and Risks from New Technology
As global financial institutions leverage emerging technologies throughout their business processes, GFMA is closely following developments to consider implications for the industry and policymakers. GFMA with partners published “The Impact of Distributed Ledger Technology in Global Capital Markets” that evaluates the opportunities and risks of DLT and DLT-based securities and assesses the applicability of existing legal, regulatory, and risk management frameworks. To illustrate the potential of DLT in capital markets, the report examines three emerging use cases: collateral management; tokenization of assets; and sovereign and quasi-sovereign bonds (May 2023). GFMA is also actively following the developments of Artificial Intelligence (AI) and evolving use cases resulting from the use of Generative and Predictive AI.
5. Financial Resilience
Regulators from around the world came together through the Basel Committee on Banking Supervision to adopt common international standards for prudential requirements to be applied to systemically important banks. GFMA supports consistent standards that ensure financial stability while preserving a global level playing field for all firms.
We look forward to continued engagement with regulators, industry and the broader financial community to maintain and strengthen the global capital markets, in the interest of efficient and sustained economic growth for all regions.
