On 29^th September 2017, the European Securities and Markets Authority (ESMA) launched a consultation on Guidelines detailing the obligations which apply to non-significant benchmarks under the Benchmarks Regulation (BMR).

The Consultation Paper proposes lighter requirements for non-significant benchmarks, their administrators and their supervised contributors in relation to four areas:

1. procedures, characteristics and positioning of oversight function;
2. appropriateness and verifiability of input data;
3. transparency of methodology; and
4. governance and control requirements for supervised contributors.