More external involvement in the fit and proper assessments by DNB and the AFM, but the wishes of Parliament are ignored
The AFM and DNB assess the fitness and propriety of virtually all important financial sector officers active at market participants. There has been a debate for some time about the way this assessment is carried out. The assessment itself is also criticised. Following the recommendations made by the Ottow Committee, various improvements have recently been made by the AFM and DNB, which have led, among other things, to the involvement of more external experts in the assessment.
In addition to this good news, there are still concerns regarding the assessment. In particular, these concerns relate to the limited legal protection that the individual officers have when confronted with a negative result of the assessment. A special aspect of these concerns lies in the fact the AFM and DNB have simply ignored Parliament’s explicitly expressed wish to give external experts a substantive role in the appeal procedure.
Guido Roth wrote an article about it: “Van de AFM, de rechtsstaat, die aan haar voorbijgaat”, which was published in a special issue of the Corporate Law Journal dedicated to Vino Timmerman. You can read the article in Dutch here.