FSA Cancel More Advisers Permissions under Schedule 6 Failings

Solutions Financial Services, Brace Financial Services & Tudor Mortgages all recieved final notice about a decision to cancel their permissions to carry onregulated activities. The firms owed £ thousands in unpaid fees, despite several requests from the FSA for payment. A Warning Notice was issued followed by their Decision Notices on the 15th July 2010.

If nothing else, this and other withdrawals of permission that have occurred recently, show that the FSA will not tolerate being ignored when they request information or overdue fees.

Should you get any kind of communication from the FSA, even if it is in error; contact your compliance professional for advice.

Call 07092 289901 Now to arrange a free quotation

Sally Dewar, the FSA’s Managing director of risk, said in a letter to firms in May:

“If you fail to respond with the confirmation requested by 30th June 2010, you may be subject to followup action by the FSA. This could inclusde us exercising our powers under the Financial Services and Markets Act 2000 including for example under Section 165 to require you to provide information or under S166 to require you to appoint a skilled person to provide a report to us. It could also result in enforcement action against both the firm and individuals.”

Should you get any kind of communication from the FSA, even if it is in error; contact your compliance professional for advice.

Call 07092 289901 Now to arrange a free quotation

Look at the "Dear CEO" letters here | Email Feedback

From our experience and with the 2nd anniversary of TCF having been embedded into firms, we thought it a timely reminder that you need to address the TCF actions that you have taken for your firm.

Most compliance providers will supply a TCF form for a price, with any number of questions which you need to consider. This type of form is good for provoking a reaction and making you think of the relevant business area.

We, being alternative thinkers, consider that something relevant to the prescribed and required outcomes from 1 to 6, with a reference to your company documentation, the FSA handbook and ideas on how best to answer the various elements would be more useful..... and hold on, why not do it for free too?

Due to the ongoing popularity of the service (and even those who see it is a threat) we have decided to leave it running for May. Our competitors need time to evaluate and amend their own offering and the average number of requests shows no sign of waning as this has now gone viral.

The document is purely designed to give you ideas and prompts and should not be seen as a TCF panacea but hopefully will assist you, using the thousands of hours experience in TCF that we possess.

We would welcome any (constructive) feedback from people using the guide, so that we may refine it. please email feedback@cei-compliance-limited.co.uk

Online Notifications & Applications "ONA"

This tip is directly applicable to all authorised firms, especially those with regular notifications and applications being made to FSA.

ONA is the FSAs new application and submission system for processing regulatory transactions such as approved persons and appointed representative applications. It will replace the current paper based processes and systems such as Firms Online - Regulatory Transactions. [It is a sister system to GABRIEL, which of course superseded the Firms Online - Regulatory Reporting system in 2008]

You can submit any of the following applications using a secure, user friendly, online system (the FSAs description!):

• approved persons;
• appointed representatives;
• cancellations;
• variation of permissions;
• waivers;
• standing data; and
• passports.

ONA first became available for firms to use from June 7th. After the transition period over the summer, from 4 October (this date may change!)it will be compulsory for all firms who wish to submit relevant applications. From that time paper applications and notifications for the relevant areas will no longer be accepted (save for times when the system crashes!).

NB The following application types do not use ONA – and remain ‘paper-based’ - please see the relevant FSA webpages for further details.

Key Action Points

You will first need to register before being able to use the ONA service. To register you must be an approved person holding certain ‘significant influence functions’ (i.e. those with any of Controlled Functions 1, 3 - 10, 28, 29). For security reasons, FSA will first authenticate the approved person's information against their records.

During the registration process, you will need to enter the details of the person who will become the Principal User of ONA for the firm. The nominated Principal User will then be responsible for creating and maintaining any other users that your firm(s) need.

Once nominated FSA will then send an email (almost instantaneously!) to the Principal User asking them to activate their ONA account, using the information provided in the email.

The FSA guide to ONA registration can be found at http://www.fsa.gov.uk/Pages/Doing/Regulated/ona/registration/index.shtml

Once into the system further help guides and screens are available to use.

Help

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