What I crazy and busy last few weeks of September. I will talk to the AGM and to the Annual Conference further below but sandwiched between this was another personal highlight as I visited New York for a day at the Ryder Cup. Navigating New York is normally a challenge but with the UN General Assembly also in town it felt even harder.
Notwithstanding the gridlock, it was an amazing experience to see the best of the best up close and to walk Bethpage Black – what a super course. Europe demonstrated the essence of teamwork, supported by meticulous preparation, and then garnished with individual excellence. I was trying to think of some examples we could apply at the LMA as we work through the rest of the year.
Another month of getting to see many of you in person or virtual and I am pleased to chalk off seeing another 27 of you.
We held our AGM on the 24th September, hosting it in a larger venue for the first time and encouraging many of you to turn out. It was certainly busy, with over 250 attendees.
Member voting was also strong, and we received a record of number of votes for the new Board, with 38 full members voting. Seven of the Board were up for election, and we also had several new candidates. I am pleased to announce that Antonio Stochino from Intesa, Naomi Jarvis from Lloyds, and Chris Lovgren from BBVA were newly elected members. I will look forward to working with them and encourage you also to engage with them and input your wishes for both them and the Board as a whole.
Additionally, we introduced the concept of a legal advisory position to attend Board meetings, and a separate election saw Vanessa Schürmann from White & Case appointed.
I would like to thank those who were unsuccessful for putting their names forward, and I know the LMA will still be able to draw on their support and input to the LMA activities.
Please see more details here.
For the first time, we introduced a separate strategic offsite with some of the Board where I presented a three-year plan covering our vision, specific goals, budgets, and priorities. I will share this in greater detail to all the members over the coming quarter.
At a high level, I set out a goal to improve the recognition of the LMA within the broader capital markets community, drive greater engagement and penetration amongst our members, and to overall ensure that all our work delivers tangible outputs supporting your loan markets and activities.
Many of you have asked for more learning and development opportunities, and I am committed to provide this in 2026 and beyond. Note I say more because we already provide a strong service and capability with 3,000 people, and 600+ firms using already in 2025.
Recognising the importance of our role in the provision of clear market guidance, we will shortly be publishing some amendments to our front running user guide, designed to make it clear that, unless optional provisions are included, the current front running definition is not designed to capture products such as ordinarily structured credit derivatives and credit risk insurance.
However, in light of more detailed feedback received as part of the working party consultation process (which included both our Senior Inhouse Legal Forum and CRI working party), we have decided to also, as a separate exercise, establish a new working group to consider the extent to which the approach and content of the Front-running provisions remains suitable and fit for purpose in the current market. Something not attempted since the LMA’s early years so watch this space.
I will cover the LMA comms further on in this note but wanted to draw attention to the recent webinar on Euribor fallbacks. Over 1,000 people registered to hear our work, and we are pleased to call out that all LMA documentation will be updated to include these fallbacks. We will continue to support the market in adopting best practises, with robust fallbacks essential to preserve financial stability.
And of course, what a spectacular way to end the month with the Annual Conference. After 17 years at QEII Conference Centre, we welcomed over 900 attendees to an exciting new venue. The theme was centred on Mobilising the Markets and reflected the changes in markets, people, and the LMA.
The numbers were exceptional, and I was thrilled to see so many of you throughout the day. All your ideas and recommendations are very much encouraged and will be taken into consideration.
I would like to thank all the speakers who made the day such a success. All of them spoke with authority and presence, covering a plethora of topics across our loan markets.
A big thank you also to the sponsors and exhibitors of the day (the full list can be viewed here). It is very much appreciated and allows us to incrementally add more value to the event and to our outputs.
Finally, I hope you were able to see Meike and her events team during the day. They have put much work and many hours into setting this up. Also, Anne and Leyla (membership and comms) also provided their own sparkle for the build-up and the day itself. Thanks to these unseen heroes.
September saw us more working across other events. Our regulatory team spent some time inDenmark at Eurofi, some of us were able to attend the Fund Finance conference in London – another flagship, and we contributed to other round tables with Versana and BNYM. The former covering their solutions platform and with some interesting debate with many of the bank attendees and the latter talking to their improved CLO funds platform attended by a large segment of London managers.
October will see our Middle East conference in Dubai, always a highlight, and this year we have added a day of loan market training to the agenda. Review the agenda here.
We will be hosting our FutureLend on 15 October in Amsterdam and delighted to see so many of you have nominated their young professionals.
As always, we will be holding several roundtables covering product and regional activities – Credit Risk Insurance, Sustainable Finance, Securitisation, and Technology.
The LMA is also proud to support other industry bodies, and we will be attending the IACPM event covering CRI and SRT, and the annual LSTA conference in New York.
To celebrate or not to celebrate? Well, we’ve just passed 20K followers on LinkedIn! We’re building more awareness around the LMA to make sure we’re recognised as the authoritative voice of the EMEA loan markets.
You’ll have seen the Annual Conference panel summaries on our LinkedIn. And you might have noticed we’re continuing the promotional campaign for LMA Edge, our tech event taking place in February 2026. We’ve been speaking with tech firms to get their insights on emerging loan technologies including DLT, Legal Tech and Gen AI. Watch the videos here.
The Autumn edition of Horizons is out now, featuring contributions from Jackson, Etti & Edu, LSEG, Mizuho and BRAE. Plenty more to come over the next few weeks. Stay tuned!
It is now several consecutive months I have talked to the regulatory work. The Securitisation consultation response is still in flight, and we hope to complete this in the next few weeks.
Over the last month we have spoken directly to several of the national supervisors talking to the EBA Q&A clarification on conditional sales agreements. I have encouraged by the understanding and in many cases empathy with our position.
Over October we will be meeting with several of the key regulators in person.
Over the last month we have been delighted to welcome six new members: Corinthia Global Management, Recovery Advisers, KBRA, Central Bank of Ireland, LendOS and RW Blears LLP.
In mid-October we will be sending out the membership renewal information for the coming year. With so much planned, I look forward to continuing to work with you all in the coming year.
We have added some firepower to the LMA team over the last month with some consultancy support around L&D, sponsorship platform, and the Middle East.
It is likely we will add to this over the next few months, and I would like to add senior resource in the Middle East and another to support our building work around emerging technology. With documentation being so critical I will also be looking to add expertise there.
There has been a lot to cover in this note, and I haven’t even talked to the loan markets which has also seen much activity in September. I am sure you will have seen that energy at our conference and trust you all took that opportunity to network.
Thanks for your continued support and input.
Scott McMunn
CEO
Loan Market Association
