The European Covered Bond Council is moving ahead with setting up two taskforces, on transparency and long term financing, that were announced at its plenary in Vienna last month by inviting requests from members to join the two groups.

The transparency taskforce will liaise with the ICMA Covered Bond Investor Council (CBIC) and members of the Label Advisory Council to develop a road-map towards facilitating data comparison and to enhance the level of harmonisation of formats and definitions across covered bond jurisdictions, according to a message sent out by the ECBC.

The remit of the long term financing taskforce relates to analysing initiatives on SME and long term funding solutions at the European level and investigating any potential interest or intention of national and European legislators in using covered bond funding techniques as a model for dual recourse instruments with new collateral asset classes.

The ECBC envisages the two taskforces being technical think-tanks comprised of up to 20 participants. It has invited members to apply to join the two bodies, with selection based on geographical and stakeholder representation, and competences in the respective areas.