Now, platform providers will have until the end of December 2013 to comply with the new rules.
In a Policy Statement released last year, the FSA said the new information reporting requirements had been designed to “reduce the difference in treatment”, in terms of provide fund information and voting rights, “between the increasing number of consumers who hold fund units through nominees” – such as via platforms – “and those who invest in funds directly”.
News of the one-year delay was contained in a so-called quarterly consultation issued by the FSA earlier this month, which did not press release it.
A spokeswoman for the FSA said yesterday that the delay had proposed due to “operational issues” having to do with implementing the new rules “that have come to light recently”, in part through the lobbying efforts of businesses and their representative trade organisations.
She said businesses that would be affected by the rules have four weeks to say whether they approve of the delay.
The spokeswoman stressed that the delay did not mean that the FSA’s commitment to investors, “regardless of how they intend to invest”, had changed.
Cost concerns
Before news of the delay in implementing the new information reporting rules reached them, a number of platform providers told International Adviser of their concerns over the potentially high compliance costs.
In particular, they said that the FSA requirement that businesses that “cannot electronically notify investors” of key changes to their investments “must make a postal notification” could be a burden, particularly when clients lived overseas.
Another concern, one platform provider noted, was that the FSA seemed disinclined to permit clients to "opt out" of receiving all the information to which they were entitled, even in cases in which this would be prohibitively complicated or costly.
