Recital 26

(26) The Authority should supervise obliged entities in the financial sector having a high risk profile where such entities operate in at least six Member States whether through establishments or under the freedom to provide services within the Union. In such cases, supervision at Union level by the Authority would bring significant added value compared to fragmented supervision between home and host Member States by eliminating the need for national supervisors of home and host Member States to coordinate and align the measures taken with regard to various parts of the same group. In order to ensure the homogeneous supervision of groups and a more granular analysis of the risk of the cross-border entities assessed, the assessment of the ML/TF risk of obliged entities which are part of a group should always be done at the level of the group, resulting in a single group-wide risk score to be considered for the purposes of the selection. The entire group should then be considered as the selected obliged entity. While the exact number of entities that could meet the risk and cross-border activities criteria for direct supervision varies and depends on their business model and money-laundering risk profile at the moment of the assessment, it is necessary to ensure an optimal, progressive and dynamic repartition of competences between the Union and national authorities in the first phase of the existence of the Authority. To ensure a sufficient number and adequate range of types of high-risk groups and entities that are supervised at Union level, the Authority should have sufficient resources to simultaneously supervise up to 40 groups and entities, at least during the first selection process. In the event that more than 40 entities would qualify for direct supervision based on their high risk profile, the Authority should select from among them the 40 entities operating, whether through establishments or under the freedom to provide services, in the highest number of Member States. In the event that that criterion is not sufficient to be able to select 40 entities, in particular where several obliged entities operate in the same number of Member States — for example, entities number 39, 40 and 41 all operate in the same number of Member States — the Authority should be able to distinguish among them and should select those that have the highest ratio of volume of transactions with third countries to their total volume of transactions. In subsequent selection processes, and building on the experience with supervision acquired during the first selection process, it would be beneficial for the number of entities under its supervision to increase also for the Authority to ensure complete coverage of the internal market under its supervision. To that end, in the event that more than 40 entities would qualify for direct supervision based on their high risk profile, the Authority should be able to, in consultation with the supervisory authorities, agree to supervise a specific different number of entities or groups that is greater than 40. In deciding on that specific number, the Authority should take into account its own resources in terms of its capacity to allocate or additionally hire the necessary number of supervisory and support staff and should ensure that the increase in the financial and human resources is feasible. At the same time, complete coverage of the internal market could be ensured by supervising at least one entity per Member State. In the Member States where no entities are identified following the regular selection process, the risk methodology designed for the selection process, including the criteria for choosing between several entities with a high risk profile, should be applied in order to select one entity.

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Source: EUR-Lex CELLAR · retrieved 2026-09-04 · Text as adopted (Official Journal); later amendments are not incorporated in this text.