This response to CP12/22: Client assets regime: EMIR, multiple pools and the wider review - Parts II & III is submitted on behalf of the Futures and Options Association.
The FOA welcomes the FSA’s willingness to consider fundamental changes to the client money and assets regime and the assurance to undertake an open-minded review of the regime in 2013.
Indeed, while the FOA has supported the various incremental changes the FSA has introduced to the client assets regime over the course of the last four years, the FOA has been looking forward to a more wholesale review, which is aligned with necessary changes to insolvency law and the need to simplify compliance and implementation.
The FOA would like to stress the importance for both the FSA and the industry to consider such fundamental changes carefully and would encourage the FSA to engage with it and its member firms, as well as other industry participants, during the period before trial determination so as to ensure that any practical and operational issues can be factored into the FSA’s thinking from an early stage and new rules are finalised. In particular, the level of detail provided in relation to the wider review proposals is not yet sufficiently developed to enable FOA members to fully understand and calibrates the impact that such changes might have on the way they carry on their business.
