The Securities and Commodities Authority (SCA) has launched a campaign to crackdown on unlicensed financial services offerings.
The regulator posted a story on its website on 1 January 2023 – but unfortunately the article was published in Arabic only. The only information in English is the headline entitled – “SCA launches a campaign to confront unlicensed financial activities”.
Translated from Arabic to English, SCA said that it will protect “licensed financial activities from unfair competition” and strengthen the fight against money laundering.
Maryam Al-Suwaidi, chief executive of SCA, said that the campaign will help provide support to protect investors and their savings, develop the securities sector and push it to advanced and competitive levels regionally and globally.
She added that the campaign highlights the need to be alert and wary of the fraudulent methods used by the unregulated companies and what they do in terms of impersonating real companies licensed by the regulatory authorities, fabricating forged commercial and professional documents and licences, as well as warning investors against dealing with any unlicensed financial activity in order to preserve their savings.
‘Good day’
Nigel Sillitoe, chief executive of Insight Discovery, said in a Linkedin post: “This is a good day for wealth managers in the UAE and beyond who take regulation seriously, hopefully some of our rants and complaints against unregulated firms may have, in a small way, contributed to the launch of this campaign.”
Prior to the SCA announcement, a source told International Adviser that large regulatory changes in the UAE has led to more “unregulated products” in the market.
They added: “I think this will be a temporary phase. As things settle over the next couple of years, it will become much more efficient under the current regulations. The UAE still has a journey ahead with regulation. The pace of change will be faster. It still has areas which could be regulated better. We believe that the regulators are looking at it. This is not the end. There’s more to come.”
