The Commission de Surveillance du Secteur Financier (CSSF), Luxembourg's financial regulator, issued a statement on Friday urging all supervised entities to review their organisational setup to allow for remote working.

In light of the development of COVID-19, CSSF has asked that all supervised entities immediately review their current organisational setup so as to ensure that the least possible staff has to travel to and from and work, their usual workplace or backup site. The deployment of staff members to the usual workplace or backup site should be limited to vital functions that are essential to maintain the critical mission of supervised entities for them to remain operational provided that these functions cannot be performed remotely.

The financial regulator added that where staff is not equipped with laptops or other mobile devices, entities should implement virtual desktop and other remote access solutions, cloud based or not, as soon as possible.

The CSSF stressed the importance of the financial centre making its contribution to protecting as much as possible the health system and following the clear call from doctors and the government to stay home.

The financial regulator thus maintained that remote access from home must be privileged over other forms of working, including working from backup centres.