Financial advisers operating through companies

I am a financial adviser but I operate through my own limited liability company.  Do I have to register both myself individually and the company as separate financial service providers on the FSPR? 

Regulation 6 in the new Financial Service Providers (Exemptions) Regulations 2010 deals with ‘sole adviser practices’.

Your company will not have to be registered on the FSPR in its own right as a financial service provider if:

• You provide the financial adviser services (or a relevant connected service) on behalf of the company and you are the only director, or one of only two directors, and senior manager of the company;
• You are personally registered (in your individual capacity) on the FSPR.

If you wish to rely on this exemption from the need to register your company on the FSPR, you must ensure that:

• Your company joins an approved consumer dispute resolution scheme or the Reserve Scheme (if section 48 of the FSPA would otherwise have required it to join as part of its own registration);
• You give the Registrar of Financial Service Providers the name of your company so you will be linked to it for the benefit of the public and the regulators who search the register.  You do this by providing the name of the company as your ‘trading name’ when you are asked for this in your FSPR registration application.  If you are already registered on the FSPR and did not name the company in your application, you must log back on to the FSPR and update your details as soon as you can.

If you do not register your company (relying on this exemption), the company will be restricted to only providing those financial services (listed in sections 5(a) to (n) of the FSPA) for which you are personally registered.