Skip to main content
Authority

Autoriteit Financiële Markten (AFM)

The AFM is the Dutch conduct supervisor. It supervises how financial firms behave towards their customers and towards the market: investment firms, asset managers, intermediaries, crypto-asset service providers, audit firms, trading venues and listed issuers. Whether those firms are financially sound is DNB's question, not the AFM's.

Checked by Remmert
4 min read

What is the AFM responsible for?

The AFM is the Dutch conduct supervisor. It covers how financial firms behave towards their customers and towards the market: investment firms, asset managers, intermediaries, crypto-asset service providers, audit firms, trading venues and listed issuers. Whether those firms are financially sound is DNB's question, not the AFM's. The split dates to 1 March 2002, when the Netherlands divided supervision into two peaks under the Financial Supervision Act (Wft): conduct at the AFM, prudential soundness at DNB (AFM, about us).

The AFM is funded entirely by levies on the firms it supervises, across fifteen fee categories, with rates set annually by the Ministers of Finance and of Social Affairs and Employment.

Last updated 17 August 2026. First version of this page. Register counts were read directly from the AFM's registers between 15 and 17 August 2026, and the Dutch MiCA transitional date was reconciled against ESMA's per-member-state list.

Key facts

Official name

Stichting Autoriteit Financiële Markten

Supervising since

1 March 2002

Seat

Vijzelgracht 50, Amsterdam

Chair

Laura van Geest

Board

Hanzo van Beusekom, Jos Heuvelman (departing September 2026), Marije Lely (since 1 October 2025), Richard Doornbosch (from 1 September 2026)

Staff

697 FTE at year-end 2025, down from 772 in 2024 and 839 in 2023 (Annual Report 2025, published 13 April 2026)

Costs, 2025

€154.9 million, about €11 million under budget (2024: €141.7 million)

Which institutions does the AFM supervise, and how many?

The AFM's registers are public and searchable, and the counts move daily. As at mid-August 2026:

PopulationCountAs atRegister

Investment firms and credit institutions

1,457

16 Aug 2026

register

UCITS and EEA-UCITS managers and funds

1,254

15 Aug 2026

register

Financial service providers and intermediaries

17,705

17 Aug 2026

register

Audit firms

235

17 Aug 2026

register

Issuers of listed share capital

2,822

15 Aug 2026

register

Licensed crypto-asset service providers

18

year-end 2025

Annual Report 2025

Which regulations does the AFM enforce?

Eight regimes, and the AFM's role differs by regime and by counterpart.

RegulationThe AFM's role

MiFID II / MiFIR

National competent authority for investment-firm conduct, market structure and transparency

MiCA

Licenses crypto-asset service providers and supervises their conduct; DNB covers prudential supervision and token issuers

AIFMD / UCITS

Licenses and supervises fund managers and funds

DORA

Thematic and entity examinations, major ICT incident reports, DORA at licensing, and oversight of threat-led penetration testing (AFM on DORA supervision); collected the register of information jointly with DNB

Market Abuse Regulation

Direct enforcement, including against individuals

Prospectus Regulation

Approves and publishes prospectuses

SFDR

Supervises sustainability disclosures by Dutch market participants

Wwft

AML supervisor for investment firms, fund managers, crypto-asset service providers and life-insurance intermediaries: one of six Wwft supervisors in the Netherlands (AFM)

What does the AFM publish, and how often?

The AFM publishes guidance and interpretations, thematic sector reports, an annual risk outlook (Trendzicht, published each December for the year ahead), an annual supervisory agenda (January), consultations, individual enforcement notices and an annual report each April. News for professionals is available as an RSS feed, and the registers can be exported. The rhythm is four fixed annual publications, plus a continuous stream of enforcement notices and sector letters, several per week.

What has the AFM published recently?

The ten most recent items we captured, as at 17 August 2026, from afm.nl. Pipeline-fed; regenerated, not hand-maintained.

DatePublication

23 Jul 2026

Compliance and internal audit priorities for fund managers

22 Jul 2026

AFM–AMF joint paper: five enablers for effective EU-level market supervision

10 Jul 2026

Dutch supervisors urge faster action on digital autonomy

9 Jul 2026

Embedded insurance risks unsuitable consumer choices

17 Jun 2026

Effective management requires more than policy: information security governance

17 Jun 2026

Faster AI attacks call for greater cyber resilience

15 Jun 2026

Auditors need a central position and decisive influence within audit firms

9 Jun 2026

bunq fined for late response to fraud complaints

26 May 2026

Financial stability under further pressure due to the Iran war

13 May 2026

Instruction to Euronext Amsterdam over CSDR open access (underlying decision 12 November 2025)

Which deadlines does the AFM own?

2025

  1. 30 June 2025Passed

    End of the Dutch MiCA transitional period

    The Netherlands took the six-month option under Article 143(3), counted from 30 December 2024. That is a year earlier than the general EU backstop below.

2026

  1. 22 March 2026Passed

    DORA register of information due, to the AFM and DNB

  2. 1 July 2026Passed

    End of the general EU MiCA transitional period

    Applies to member states that did not shorten their own transitional period, as the Netherlands did.

2027

  1. 10 July 2027Upcoming

    The EU anti-money-laundering regulation (AMLR) starts to apply

No fixed date

  1. January 2028Expected

    AMLA begins direct supervision of around 40 selected EU institutions

What does the AFM's enforcement look like?

In 2025 the AFM took 25 formal measures and 446 informal ones, 471 actions in total, and collected €16.7 million in fines (Annual Report 2025, 13 April 2026). The formal measures break down as 8 fines, 1 incremental penalty order, 2 criminal referrals, 1 licence withdrawal and the remainder instructions. The informal side is 134 warning letters, 193 supervisory letters and 119 boiler-room warnings. That ratio, roughly eighteen informal actions for every formal one, is the single most useful number on this page for anyone estimating how the AFM actually intervenes.

Individual cases from the last twelve months: a €625,000 fine to a private individual for closing-price manipulation in NX Filtration shares (16 January 2026), €297,000 to Arrowstreet Capital for 101 incorrect and 85 wrongly published net short position notifications between July 2020 and November 2024 (20 April 2026), €300,000 to Lynx B.V. for misleading risk warnings in advertising (decision 17 April 2025, published March 2026), and an instruction to Euronext Amsterdam over CSDR open access (decision 12 November 2025, published 13 May 2026).

What changes for a mid-sized institution?

Two things change. First, the AFM operates a national permit regime for smaller Dutch investment firms, distinct from a full MiFID licence. Second, fund managers below the AIFMD thresholds fall into a registration regime rather than full authorisation. The AFM also describes its DORA supervision as risk-based and proportionate (AFM). In practice, the questions still arrive. They are just scaled to size.

What can GenCompl.ai do for you?

We track the AFM's registers, news, enforcement notices and thematic publications daily and date every change, which is what feeds the two tables above.

For a licence holder, the question that matters is narrower than what the AFM published: it is which of these obligations attaches to your permission set. That is what our scope check derives, with the article reference behind each line.

Book a working session

Sources

Regulations

  • Markets in Crypto-Assets (MiCA)

    MiCA is Regulation (EU) 2023/1114. Full application began on 30 December 2024 and the EU-wide transitional period expired on 1 July 2026, so there is now no grandfathering anywhere in the EEA. Around 325 crypto-asset service providers are authorised. Not one asset-referenced token issuer appears on ESMA's register.

    NextMiCA review consultation closes

    Checked

  • Digital Operational Resilience Act (DORA)

    DORA is Regulation (EU) 2022/2554. It has applied since 17 January 2025 to 20 categories of licensed financial entity, from banks to crypto-asset service providers. It requires an ICT risk management framework, major incident reporting within 4 hours of classification, an annual register of ICT contracts, and threat-led penetration testing every three years.

    NextNext register of information cycle, reference date expected 31 December 2026

    Checked

  • Anti-Money Laundering Regulation (AMLR)

    The AMLR is Regulation (EU) 2024/1624. It applies from 10 July 2027 and is directly applicable, so from that date customer due diligence, beneficial ownership, reporting and internal controls come from EU law rather than national statute. Cash payments for goods and services are capped at €10,000. Football clubs and agents follow on 10 July 2029.

    NextAMLR applies (Art. 90) and the AMLD6 transposition deadline. References to Directive (EU) 2015/849 are construed as references to the AMLR and AMLD6, per the correlation table in Annex VI (Art. 89); the repeal itself sits in AMLD6

    Checked