Valuation on the regulatory agenda

Valuations sit beneath much of what securities regulators oversee: disclosures, fund net asset values, transactions brought to market, and the confidence investors place in all three. When markets reprice rapidly, the quality of the valuations underneath is tested — and so is the framework that produced them. Over the past few years, that framework has moved visibly onto the international regulatory agenda.

From roundtable to statement of cooperation

In March 2022, IOSCO and the IVSC convened a roundtable on valuation. It was followed, on 20 October 2022, by a statement of cooperation between IOSCO and the IVSC, signed by IOSCO Board Chair Ashley Alder and IVSC Chair Alistair Darling. Its stated aim is a better understanding of the quality and consistency of valuations, and of the professional standards of valuers, internationally. For securities commissions, the significance is less the document than the direction: the body that brings together the world’s securities regulators and the global valuation standard-setter committed to examining the same questions together.

Where rules already point to the standards

Some capital-markets regulators have gone further and written the standards into their rulebooks. In Türkiye, the Capital Markets Board’s Communiqué on Valuation Standards in Capital Markets (III-62.1, published in the Official Gazette on 1 February 2017) provides that valuations required under capital-markets legislation must comply with IVS as published by the IVSC, in translations prepared by the national professional bodies. The original adoption dates back to 2006, making it a long-standing example of a securities regulator mandating IVS for capital-markets valuations. More broadly, IVS are used as a framework in more than 100 countries, which gives regulators a common point of reference when valuation work crosses borders — as it increasingly does.

Standard-setting in the open

A standard regulators can point to must also be one they can scrutinise. The next edition of IVS is being developed in public: an exposure draft was open for consultation from 30 January to 30 April 2026, with the next IVS to be issued in January 2027 and effective from January 2028. The draft was prepared by four technical boards — Standards Review; Business and Intangible Assets; Financial Instruments; and Tangible Assets — and follows the 2024 Agenda Consultation. For supervisors, an open and consultative process matters in its own right: it means the framework underpinning regulated valuations evolves through evidence and comment rather than behind closed doors.

An open channel for regulators

The exchange runs in both directions. The Valuation Pulse, an ongoing sentiment tracker on AI and technology in valuation published by the IVSC with the fintech firm 73 Strings, is explicitly open to regulators alongside valuers, firms, clients, investors and academics, with anonymised responses feeding the IVSC’s AI and Technology Working Group. For securities commissions watching technology change how regulated valuations are produced, it is a direct route into the evidence base. The pattern across all of this is consistent: valuation has become a shared concern of regulators and standard-setters, and the infrastructure for working on it together — cooperation agreements, public consultations, open research — is now in place.