CNMV consults until Monday on extending its Complaints Service to crypto-assets and crowdfunding

Spain’s National Securities Market Commission (CNMV) is keeping open until Monday, 16 November, the hearing process for a draft circular that would extend its complaints and grievances procedure to users of crypto-asset services and European crowdfunding platforms. Anyone wishing to submit comments can send them in writing to ServiciodereclamacionesCNMV@cnmv.es.

How to take part in the consultation, which closes on Monday

The CNMV opened the public hearing on 15 October. The draft amends Circular 7/2013, which currently governs complaints against investment services firms and the handling of enquiries in the securities market. The supervisor has set itself five objectives. The first is to extend the procedure to complaints arising from crypto-asset and crowdfunding services. The second is to remove the forms from the circular itself so that they can be updated more easily. The third is to reflect the organisational change that assigns the Complaints Service to the Department of Investor Protection, Fraud Prevention and Financial Education, created by a resolution of 5 March 2025. The last two are to incorporate non-sexist language into administrative drafting and to correct outdated regulatory references.

Comments must be sent in writing to ServiciodereclamacionesCNMV@cnmv.es no later than 16 November 2026. The CNMV will publish all submissions once the deadline has passed. Anyone who does not want their text, or part of it, to be made public must state so expressly in the response itself and identify the affected passage. Generic confidentiality clauses in an email are not valid for this purpose.

If the CNMV Board approves the rule, the circular will enter into force twenty days after its publication in the Official State Gazette (BOE), according to the final provision of the draft itself.

What would change for users in Spain

At present, the CNMV Complaints Service mainly serves those who use investment services and ancillary services relating to financial instruments. The draft would extend that scope to two new groups.

The first is users of the crypto-asset services defined in Article 3(1), point 16, of Regulation (EU) 2023/1114, known as MiCA, provided that supervision of those services falls to the CNMV. Law 6/2023 on Securities Markets and Investment Services designates the CNMV as the competent authority for supervising compliance with MiCA. The Bank of Spain is responsible for the supervision, inspection and sanctioning of the regulation’s obligations relating to issuers of e-money tokens and asset-referenced tokens.

The second is investors as defined in Article 2(1)(i) of Regulation (EU) 2020/1503 on European crowdfunding service providers. The CNMV is the national competent authority for that regulation.

Article 71 of MiCA already requires crypto-asset service providers to have an internal complaints procedure, free of charge for the client. Article 108 further requires competent authorities to accept written complaints, including by electronic means, regarding alleged infringements of the regulation. The draft fits this protection into the existing channel, the CNMV Complaints Service.

Who can complain and what must be done first

Not all users will be able to turn to the supervisor. In addition to the general standing requirements, the draft requires that the natural or legal person is not considered a professional client, a qualified investor under MiCA or a sophisticated investor under the crowdfunding regulation, and has not requested to be classified as a professional client or sophisticated investor.

Nor will it be possible to go directly to the CNMV. The complaint or claim must first have been submitted to the entity’s customer service department or service or, where applicable, to the customer ombudsman. Law 44/2002, as amended by Law 10/2025 of 26 December, requires proof that one month has passed since that submission without a resolution, or that the entity has not admitted it or has rejected it.

Proceedings before the supervisor will end with a reasoned report, which is not considered an appealable administrative act. The maximum resolution period is 90 calendar days, counted from the filing of the complaint or from the date on which receipt of the complete documentation is recorded. If the report is unfavourable to the entity, it must inform the Complaints Service, within a maximum of one month, whether it has voluntarily rectified. The report therefore does not in itself impose a binding outcome on the firm.

Forms and electronic processing

The circular would no longer include the forms in its annexes. The CNMV would draw them up on a voluntary basis and publish them on its website and at its offices. Entities would have to provide them to their clients when they file a complaint or grievance with the customer service department or the customer ombudsman.

The draft also updates the electronic processing of collective complaints and the exchange of documentation between entities and the CNMV, which would become mandatory through the electronic registry’s CIFRADOC service. For individual complainants, electronic filing would remain voluntary.