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29th December 2016

New Levy Fees expected for MiFID II

The FCA recently published their fourth and final consultation on the implementation of MiFID II, (see our previous article ‘MiFID II: FCA’s Fourth Consultation’).

Within this consultation the regulator has proposed a transitional rule for fees that deals with the period of time between when the regulator starts accepting applications for authorisations relating to the changes in the revised Markets in Financial Instruments Directive (MiFID II) and the moment that rule changes allow the FCA to collect fees for the changes in scope of activity. Since the implementation of MiFID II has been delayed, legislation in this regards is now due to take effect from 3rd January 2018.

The regulator proposes within their latest MiFID II consultation that the fee payable for the application under the transitional regime will only be payable where the fee for that application is higher than the amount paid for any other connected application activities it already regulates.

Firms wishing to comment on the FCA’s proposed transitional fees have until 16th January 2017 when the consultation closes.

MiFID II: FCA details new adviser levy

The new charges, as the FCA stated within their consultation paper, will help to pay for the costs of implementing MiFID II that is set to come into effect in January 2018.

The FCA’s consultation has laid out ‘fee blocks’ that group together different types of financial services firms that fall under the MiFID II regulations.

These fee blocks include:

advisors;
arrangers;
dealers or brokers;
corporate finance advisers,
portfolio managers;
managers and depositaries of investment funds, and operators of collective investment schemes or pension schemes; and
firms dealing as principal

As can be seen, within the list to be hit by the new regulatory levy next year are financial advice firms, however those with an income of less that £100,000 are excluded as are advisers that deal solely in insurance or pension transfers.

Whilst the FCA said that they do not have “comprehensive information about the proportion of firms in each fee-block that will directly benefit” from the revised Markets in Financial Directive, “as an interim measure, we intend next year to allocate the costs between the relevant fee-blocks in proportion to their share of the FCA’s AFR."

MiFID II Compliance Support

If you are currently reviewing how MiFID II will impact your business and require support or assistance in planning for MiFID II implementation, please contact our experienced regulatory & compliance support team, who would be happy to help.