AMF Spot Checks on Five French Crowdfunding Platforms Reveal Widespread Investor-Protection Failures
AMF Spot Checks on Five French Crowdfunding Platforms Reveal Widespread Investor-Protection Failures #
France’s financial markets regulator, the Autorité des Marchés Financiers (AMF), has called on crowdfunding platforms to overhaul their investor-protection practices after thematic inspections uncovered systematic failings across the sector.
As part of its supervisory priorities for 2025, the AMF carried out short thematic inspections, referred to internally as SPOTs, covering five crowdfunding service providers (CSPs) authorised to operate under the European Crowdfunding Service Providers Regulation. The regulator published its inspection summary on 2 October 2026, followed by a formal news release on 5 October calling on the sector to raise its standards.
Inspectors reviewed three projects per platform and drew a random sample of five investor files per project, totalling fifteen records per CSP. The review covered entry knowledge tests, simulations of investors’ capacity to absorb losses, key investment information sheets (KIISs), complaints-handling arrangements, and internal governance and control.
One platform permitted investors to alter their answers on the mandatory entry knowledge test until they produced the expected responses, effectively nullifying its purpose. Two platforms assigned an identical risk classification to all investors regardless of individual circumstances, ignoring the personalised-assessment requirements set out in the regulation. At one platform, thirteen out of fifteen investor files showed that a regulatory warning should have been issued, yet the platform could not demonstrate it had done so.
The regulator also identified gaps in the questionnaires used to assess investors’ knowledge, experience, and objectives, with mandatory questions found to be absent, incomplete, or poorly worded. Weaknesses in the content and completeness of KIISs and in the accessibility of complaints procedures were noted across multiple platforms.
While the AMF described the inspections as pedagogical in nature, it made clear that more rigorous, traceable information throughout the investor journey is non-negotiable, and that complaints mechanisms must be free of charge and easy to access. The intervention follows a sharp rise in crowdfunding-related disputes: the AMF’s ombudsman received 117 such cases in 2025, compared with 32 the previous year, the majority involving real estate projects that had stopped repaying investors.
The AMF said it will continue to monitor the sector and urged all platforms to act on the published guidance without delay.
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