Cyprus financial regulator CySEC has announced new disclosure requirements targeted at CIF licensed Forex and Binary Options brokers regarding customer complaints. In its efforts to clean up the sector and beef up its image, dealing promptly and effectively with customer complaints seems to be one of the regulator’s main focal points.
While CySEC has already required periodic CIF disclosure on customer complaints, starting this quarter all CIF licensed brokers will need to provide additional monthly information, in conjunction with proposals made by pan-European regulator ESMA.
The new customer complaint disclosures include:
- Whether the broker has received complaints from clients during the reporting (monthly) period.
- The number of active clients, defined as those who during the last six months have entered into at least one transaction.
- Separate disclosure of customer complaints relating to withdrawal of investor’s funds, including cases where a disagreement occurs between the client and the broker regarding the amount that the client is eligible to withdraw from his investing account.
- The date that the incident took place.
- The amount that was paid to the investor, in case the complaint was resolved.
CIFs must start to collect the aforementioned data beginiing April 1, 2017. First disclosures regarding April data must be submitted to CySEC by May 5, 2017.
More on the new customer complaint disclosures required by CySEC can be seen here.