The International Organization of Securities Commissions (IOSCO) is an association of organizations that regulate the world's securities and futures markets. Members are typically primary securities and/or futures regulators in a national jurisdiction or the main financial regulator from each country. Its mandate is to: Develop, implement, and promote high standards of regulation to enhance investor protection and reduce systemic risk Share information with exchanges and assist them with technical and operational issues Establish standards toward monitoring global investment transactions across borders and markets
IOSCO has members from over 100 countries, who regulate more than 95% of the world's securities markets. It has a permanent secretariat in Madrid, Spain.
History
IOSCO was born in 1983 from the transformation of its ancestor the "Inter-American Regional Association" (created in 1974) into a truly global cooperative. This decision to expand the organization beyond the Americas was made at the annual gathered in Quito, Ecuador, in April 1983. At the same time, the organization was renamed to IOSCO to reflect the expanded membership beyond North and South America. Securities regulators from France, Indonesia, South Korea, and the United Kingdom were the first agencies to join from outside the Americas. The IOSCO July 1986 Paris Annual Conference was the first to take place outside of the American continents and on that occasion a decision was made to create a permanent General Secretariat for the Organization. One remnant of its early inter-American roots is that IOSCO's "official" languages are English, French, Spanish, and Portuguese.
In 1998 IOSCO started work on a number of important policies that led to broader set of guidelines. However it was the September 11, 2001 attacks as well as a series of large global financial scandals that started with Enron and including Worldcom, Parmalat, and Vivendi that brought urgency to this work and heralded IOSCO's evolution from an international "talk shop", where little of substance was accomplished, to a serious international organization with a real impact on the securities regulation. At the 1999 conference in Lisbon, it was decided to have a permanent headquarters for the administrative General Secretariat and that it should be based in Madrid.
In 2002 IOSCO adopted a multilateral memorandum of understanding (IOSCO MMoU) designed to facilitate crossborder enforcement and exchange of information among the international community of securities regulators. Then in 2005 IOSCO MMoU become the benchmark for international cooperation among securities regulators.
Membership
As of March 2022, IOSCO had 231 members. IOSCO members are divided into three main categories:
Ordinary members: primary securities and/or futures markets regulators in a jurisdiction. A stock exchange or self-regulatory organization may be an ordinary member, but only if it is the jurisdiction's primary securities regulator. Each ordinary member has one vote. Associate members: other securities and/or futures regulators in cases where there's more than one per jurisdiction. For example, the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) and the North American Securities Administrators Association in the United States are associate members of IOSCO given that the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission is the ordinary member from the United States. Associate members have no vote and are not eligible for the Executive Committee; they are, however, members of the Presidents' Committee. Affiliate members: include stock exchanges, self-regulatory organizations, and various stock market industry associations. Affiliate members have no vote, are not eligible for the Executive Committee, and are not members of the Presidents' Committee. Affiliate members that are self-regulatory organizations (SROs), are, however, members of the SRO Consultative Committee.
Structure
The organization is made up of a number of committees that meet several times a year at locations around the world supported by a permanent administrative General Secretariat.
Leadership
Administratively, IOSCO is run by a General Secretariat based in Madrid, Spain. IOSCO's current Secretary General is Paul P. Andrews, who started his renewable three-year term in March 2016. Previously, he served as the Vice President and Managing Director of Financial Industry Regulatory Authority (FINRA) a self-regulatory organization in the United States.