Of relevance to:
Firms whose activities include ‘advising on investments’
The FCA has issued a reminder to those firms whose Part 4A Permission permits them to undertake the activity of ‘advising on P2P agreements’ and who do not undertake that activity.
As was mentioned in Regulatory Roundup 75 (‘Advising: FCA Register’), firms that had the activity of ‘advising on investments’ on their Part 4A Permission were also given the additional regulated activity of ‘advising on P2P agreements’ without the firm requesting such an addition. For reasons best known to the FCA this additional regulated activity does not appear where you might expect it to be (i.e. in the ‘Permission’ drop-down box on the Financial Services Register) but rather it is tucked away in the grey box that appears under a firm’s name on the Register.
Relevant firms should have been notified of this by the FCA, but we understand that not every firm may have received this notification. As such it is possible that some firms may have this activity in their Part 4A Permission without realising this.
Until the end of October the FCA is offering a (fee free) simplified short form process to remove this regulated activity for firms that do not need it (as mentioned in Regulatory Roundup 75 the original intention was to close down this process after 6 October 2016). After this time all applications to remove the activity will have to be submitted via a Variation of Permission application through Connect (and presumably not fee free).
