assetmanagement

The purpose of disclosing conflicts of interest in the investment services industry is to ensure maximum transparency for the investor. A common conflict of interest is the situation when the fund’s investment manager owns voting shares in the fund and appoints a director who is already heavily involved in the investment manager’s structure. Consequently, the appointed director might be conflicted if one is required to take a decision against the investment manager. To mitigate this conflict of interest, the fund would apply its existent policy on conflicts of interest which would stipulate that the conflict be disclosed during board meetings…

In an underground burial temple located within the EU’s southernmost State, one can find a primitive drawing of a spiralling never-ending red tree. Archaeologists opine that the millennia-old Saflieni Hypogeum’s ‘Tree of Life’ was painted to give meaning to death. There is no evidence that the Maltese prehistoric biosphere sustained red spiralling trees. If archaeologists did not inform us about this pictorial human bias, one might have assumed that never-ending trees did exist in Malta. Humans understand that trees are not never-ending and the red artefact is merely an imaginary depiction. On the other hand, Artificial Intelligence (“AI”) knows that…

In the ‘Proposal for a Regulation laying down harmonised rules on artificial intelligence’ (the “draft EU AI Act”), transparency is regulated by Article 13 and Article 52 thereof. The former applies to systems of Artificial Intelligence (“AI”) which are classified as high-risk and the latter applies to limited-risk AI systems. As explained in the previous briefing of this series of insights on AI and investment funds, the use of AI in investment services will generally fall under limited-risk AI systems. The reason being that high-risk AI systems as defined under the draft EU AI Act do not include AI systems…

If the draft EU regulation on Artificial Intelligence (“AI”) titled ‘Proposal for a Regulation laying down harmonised rules on artificial intelligence’ (the “draft EU AI Act”) becomes law, investment funds could have an additional risk which would need consideration, namely, the AI risk. As outlined in previous briefings in this insight-series, the definition of AI as provided in Article 3 of the draft EU AI Act will be an umbrella term which includes machine-learning and algorithms which are already being used in the asset management industry according to a report1 by the European Securities and Markets Authority. The draft EU…