Fastmarkets successfully completes IOSCO assurance review for its forest products prices

London, April 26, 2022 – Fastmarkets, the industry-leading cross-commodity price reporting agency (PRA), has successfully completed another external assurance review of its key forest products prices.

Professional services company BDO carried out the independent assurance review of the 15 audited prices and found that, as of March 31, 2022, Fastmarkets’ responses were in line with the Principles for Oil PRAs set out by the International Organization of Securities Commissions (IOSCO) in 2012. The review process includes a comprehensive review of all relevant methodologies, processes, and policies to verify their adherence to these Principles.  

As stated by the European Securities and Markets Authority (ESMA), this external assurance review is sufficient to demonstrate compliance with the audit requirements of the EU Benchmark Regulation (BMR) for commodity benchmarks (paragraph 18 of Annex II).   

The prices reviewed include some of those administered by Fastmarkets Benchmark Administration Oy (FBA Oy), which was incorporated in Finland in December 2020 to administer all benchmarks that are in scope of the BMR.

“The quality of our methodologies, effectiveness of our pricing processes, and integrity of our assessors guide our purpose: to publish reliable and trusted prices that the forest products industry can rely on to trade today and plan for tomorrow,” Fastmarkets CEO Raju Daswani said. “This assurance review supports our commitment to be transparent and accountable.”

This is the first year that Fastmarkets audited all main forest products pricing businesses (FOEX, RISI and Random Lengths) under a single assurance review, which covered 15 prices of both type 1 and type 2 IOSCO accreditations. It includes our key European and Chinese PIX pulp indices, European and North American recovered paper prices and North American price assessments for Southern Yellow Pine, Containerboard and Boxboard markets.

To obtain a copy of the independent assurance reports, please click here.

Fastmarkets has invested significantly in resources and technology to ensure its price-assessment process aligns with IOSCO principles. View details here.

To view Fastmarkets’ forest products price methodology/specifications, please click here and here.