Following the March Consultation Paper (see Regulatory Roundup 54) the FCA has published PS14/11 which confirms the final fees and levies payable for 2014/15.
The annual funding requirement (AFR) remains as per the Consultation Paper (CP14/6) at £446.4m, a 3.3% increase over the previous year; Table 2.1 in PS14/11 shows the allocation between fee-blocks.
Fee-block A.7 (portfolio managers) has seen an increase of 11.7% in its allocation of the AFR in part, we are told, to recover the set-up costs of £3.3m for AIFMD implementation. Although the fee-block is categorised as ‘portfolio managers’ it actually covers the activities of managing a UCITS and managing investments as well as managing an AIF. As such, firms that are unaffected by the AIFMD will nevertheless have to contribute to the associated costs.
It will be recalled that following the merger of fee-blocks A.12 and A.13 there is now only one fee-block (A.13) for ‘advisory arrangers, dealers or brokers’; any firm in this fee-block that holds client money and/or assets will also be in fee-block A.21. We are told that some firms have been incorrectly including income arising from client money/assets activities in fee-block A.13 with the result that the final tariff data for A.21 was 11% less than was used to calculate the draft fee rate and so the final fee rates for the fee block will be around 11% higher than in CP14/6.
The FCA Fee Calculator has been updated to reflect the final rates (including FSCS etc.) so firms that have not yet been invoiced by the FCA will know what to expect.
