The Financial Markets Authority (FMA) in New Zealand announced on May 18th that a number of offshore firms had been removed from the New Zealand Financial Services Provider Register (FSPR). 23 companies already registered in the FSPR were removed from it during 2015, and 20 other firms were denied a license that would have added them to it. The reasons given were that the firms in question had misled the authorities about their ties to New Zealand, and were in fact operating from abroad, and only applied for a license in New Zealand to take advantage of the country’s good reputation. If the FMA found that there were actually no local operations in New Zealand, or that the extent of activities in the country was negligible, actions were taken in order to remove these firms from the FSPR.

The FMA also added that similar cases will be closely monitored in the future.

A statutory process must always be followed by the FMA before any firm can be removed from the FSPR, and each firm is given an opportunity to justify their operations and ties to New Zealand as a part of this process. We do, however, recommend that all holders of New Zealand licenses for financial services that think they might not be deemed by the authorities to have satisfactory ties to the country monitor the development in the country closely in the upcoming months, and take preventive action. We welcome questions about this topic and offer several alternative routes for companies interested in regulation elsewhere. Read more <span style="color: #808080;"><a style="color: #808080;" href="/?page_id=214">here</a></span> and <span style="color: #808080;"><a style="color: #808080;" href="/?page_id=240">here</a></span>.