1. A natural or legal person located in the Union that intends to act as an administrator shall apply to the competent authority designated under Article 40 of the Member State in which that person is located in order to receive:

(a) authorisation if it provides or intends to provide indices which are used or intended to be used as benchmarks within the meaning of this Regulation;

(b) registration if it is a supervised entity, other than an administrator, that provides or intends to provide indices which are used or intended to be used as benchmarks within the meaning of this Regulation, on condition that the activity of provision of a benchmark is not prevented by the sectoral discipline applying to the supervised entity and that none of the indices provided would qualify as a critical benchmark; or

(c) registration if it provides or intends to provide only indices which would qualify as non-significant benchmarks.

1a. Where one or more of the indices provided by the person referred to in paragraph 1 would qualify as critical benchmarks as referred to in points (a) and (c) of Article 20(1), the application shall be addressed to ESMA.