On 31 March 2020, the Financial Sector Conduct Authority (FSCA) published FSCA FAIS Notice 17 of 2020 on the exemption from and the extension of the period to comply with certain Fit and Proper Requirements. Subsequent to the publication, the FSCA withdrew FSCA FAIS Notice 17 of 2020 and substituted it with FSCA FAIS Notice 22 of 2020.
The only difference between the two notices is that the FSCA has amended the definition of “due date” for supervised representatives. Essentially, FSCA FAIS Notice 22 of 2020 has the effect that if a supervised representative’s deadline to comply with the Regulatory Exams (RE), Class of Business Training (COB) and/or Qualification requirements falls between 27 March 2020 and 30 November 2020 (a shorter period when compared with the withdrawn Notice) – the supervised representative now has until 15 December 2020 to comply with the relevant requirement.
In the withdrawn Notice, the FSCA had indicated that a supervised representative that had a RE, COB or Qualification deadline in the period 1 January 2020 to 30 November 2020, had been granted an extension until 15 December 2020. However according to the new Notice (FSCA FAIS Notice 22 of 2020), a supervised representative who had a deadline between 1 January – 26 March 2020 (the period before the national lockdown began) is not afforded any extension of time to meet such a deadline. FSPs that had relied on the old Notice (FSCA FAIS Notice 17 of 2020) and had re-appointed a supervised representative that had failed to meet a deadline falling between 1 January – 26 March 2020 with the understanding that they now had until 15 December 2020 to meet the requirement, will have to reconsider the status of those representatives. We have summarised the differences in the table below.
The provisions relating to the extensions and exemptions for CPD that were published in FSCA FAIS Notice 17 of 2020 remain unchanged and have been repeated in FSCA FAIS Notice 22 of 2020 and are therefore still in effect.
The new notice (FSCA FAIS Notice 22 of 2020) came into operation on 16 April 2020.
To read our article on FSCA FAIS Notice 17 of 2020 published in a previous issue of Mastering Compliance, click here.