Objective

Oversight has two key objectives:

• To ensure the stable and safe functioning of financial market infrastructures (FMIs) in the area of payments and securities. Oversight fulfils this objective mainly by assessing infrastructures against defined standards. If any shortcomings are identified, recommendations for their elimination will be issued, including deadlines for implementation. Integral elements of this objective include ongoing monitoring of FMI operators’ implementation of recommendations, the assessment of envisaged changes and developments, the analysis of operational incidents, and the evaluation of FMI statistical indicators.
• To prevent the emergence of systemic risk in the euro area financial system by taking appropriate measures. Systemic risk may arise where financial market infrastructures fail, or where some FMI participants do not meet all of their obligations, so resulting in a chain reaction of difficulties among other FMI participants, i.e. a domino effect.

The term ‘oversight’ must be distinguished from ‘financial market supervision’. The principal difference is that oversight focuses on FMI operators, while supervision is exercised over FMI participants.

Document: Oversight policy of Národná banka Slovenska – Oversight of payment systems and payment instruments