The French securities regulator, Autorité des Marchés Financiers (AMF), says it has completed a round of spot inspections of several securities crowdfunding platforms and now says more must be done to strengthen knowledge tests and assess an investor’s ability to understand and bear risk. The AMF did not name these providers but said the sample reflected the “diversity of authorized market participants.”
The AMF states that following the implementation of pan-European investment crowdfunding rules under the ECSP regulation, the regulator has been closely monitoring these investment platforms, including those that operate only in France and are regulated under national rules.
In 2025, the AMF put crowdfunding on its supervisory priorities agenda. This includes enhanced supervision on platform governance, investor information, internal controls and the management of conflicts of interest.
The SPOT inspections (Operational and Thematic Supervision of Practices) cover the period of January 2023 to December 2025.
The review included five separate platforms and targeted the following practices.
- Platform entry knowledge test for investors and the simulation of their ability to bear losses;
- Information provided to clients about the proposed investment offers in the information sheet, which the platforms are required to verify in terms of accuracy, completeness and clarity;
- Complaints handling system;
- Internal control system.
Several issues were identified, as outlined below:
The purpose of the entry knowledge test is to ensure investors can understand the risks associated with crowdfunding offers. It allows an assessment of their knowledge, experience, and investment objectives, and of the suitability of the offers proposed on the platform to their profile. However, during this series of inspections, the AMF found that at several service providers some questions required by the regulations were poorly formulated, incomplete or simply absent from the questionnaire.
The ability-to-bear-losses simulation aims to prevent investors from exposing themselves beyond their financial means. Crowdfunding platforms must issue different warnings to investors depending on the results of the entry knowledge test and the simulation. The latter must clearly state that there is a risk of losing all invested capital, and the provider must ensure investors have read this warning. However, the systems observed by the AMF do not always comply with the protocol required by the regulations in the messages displayed. Some investments may have been made without any warning being issued. Even when warnings are issued, the AMF did not always collect proof that the investor read them.
To help present key information about proposed investments to retail investors, the CSP Regulation provides a model sheet. Again, the AMF noted regulatory breaches related to the information provided by some of the crowdfunding providers it inspected. These sheets should make it possible to clearly identify project owners and their governance. They should help assess the projects funded, based on financial information from past years, own funds, and the impact of the financing offer on the project’s ownership structure. Finally, they must cover risks, including the risk of default by the project owner, delayed or absent returns, or illiquidity of the investment, and how investors can submit complaints.
The AMF did not indicate any penalties were assessed, but said it “encouraged” platforms to improve their practices.