FAA licensing process will be bigger job thn FMCA: Mason

The process of licensing of fund managers is coming to an end and next up with be an even bigger job, the second round for financial advisers.

Tuesday, November 29th 2016, 6:00AM

by Susan Edmunds

The deadline for licensing of providers under the Financial Markets Conduct Act (FMCA), including managed investments schemes, DIMS providers and derivatives issuers, is this Thursday.

Next it is expected that all financial advisers will need to be licensed under a revised Financial Advisers Act.

An exposure draft of the proposed FAA changes is due out before Christmas this year. If it follows what the Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment said earlier this year the AFA, RFA and QFE designations will be abolished and replaced with Financial Adviser Firm (FAF), Financial Adviser (FA) and Agent.

Anyone giving advice will need to be licenced.

FMA director of regulation Liam Mason says the regulator is conscious this will be an even larger project than the nearly completed FMCA one.

He said a key thing that had helped the FMCA process was early engagement with the industry about what was coming.

Two years ahead of the deadline, it had communicated what the minimum standards would look like and what the FMA’s expectations would be.

It had worked with supervisors and industry bodies on that communication.

Mason said it would be good to repeat that for advisers. “It would be more of a challenge with a larger, more diverse population. One of the things we already know is that we need to invest substantially in that.”

He said a key lesson from the FMCA experience was that a well-planned transition arrangement would be important, to help those who were already in the industry to make the move to a new world as seamless as possible.

Mason said the FMA was happy with how the FMCA process had gone.

He was confident that everyone who was operating in the market and wanted a license to continue to do so after December 1 would have one issued in time.

Tags: financial advisers Financial Advisers Act Financial Markets Conduct Act