Since the introduction of the Financial Advisers Act in 2008, the FMA has not required any regular or formal reporting from advisers, even though the Code of Professional Conduct for Financial Advisers includes a reporting requirement.

The FMA says advisers now have a good level of understanding of the regulatory framework in which they operate and it is timely to start collecting information.

It intends to publish its first Regulatory Reporting Guide and is seeking feedback from advisers and their employers.

“FMA will use information collected through regulatory reporting to inform its risk-based approach to monitoring AFAs. The information will help to prioritise our work and focus our thematic reviews. We will compare the information collected from AFAs. We may aggregate information about the AFA profession and may use this to inform our policy work.”

At the moment, the guide only requires an annual information return, submitted every year from next May. The FMA said it might consider further reporting requirements.

The return will be done online and the example provided by the FMA asks more than 70 questions, about the structure of an adviser’s business, their income, their clients, commission received and other incentives, the value of funds under management, DIMS, compliance issues, training and money handling, among other things.

The FMA said  it expects the return to take about four hours. It is asking advisers whether they agree with that time estimate. It also wants to know whether doing so will create significant costs and whether any questions will be particularly difficult to answer.

It is expected that most of the questions will stay the same each year but may change to reflect the environment.

Submissions close on October 11.

You can see a copy of the proposed return here.