Submission to Australian Treasury on Licensing exemptions for foreign financial services providers

PMAC made a submission to the Australian Treasury in support of a proposed bill that would amend licensing exemptions for foreign financial services providers (FFSPs). Further to PMAC’s previous advocacy on this issue, we reiterated our support for Australian considering the OSC to be a “comparable regulator”, allowing firms registered with the OSC to rely on an exemption from the requirement to register in Australia provided they comply with certain criteria. We again urged the Australian Securities Investment Commission (ASIC) to include every CSA jurisdiction, not just the OSC, in the comparable regulators list, stressing that the CSA and the OSC oversee and enforce materially the same laws. In the alternative, we asked the ASIC to at minimum include Alberta, British Columbia and Quebec in the jurisdictions considered to be “comparable regulators” – this is based on the fact that ASIC has entered into securities regulatory cooperation agreements with those three CSA members.

PMAC applauded Treasury’s amendments of the conditions that FFSPs would need to abide by to rely on the various licensing exemptions, noting that the currently proposed conditions balance investor and market protection against the imposition of unnecessary regulatory burden.

Click here to view the full submission.