When the new rules kick in, those who are offering class DIMS advice will have to be licensed, along with other financial services providers, such as fund managers.

The FMA has released a discussion document about the fees it will charge, because it says the licensing regime will result in extra costs for the regulator.

“These costs need to be fully recovered from licensees.”

It has called for submissions on its proposals.

Ongoing costs after licensing will be collected via the FMA annual levy, which it says will need to be adjusted. Consultation on those adjustments will take place next year when the levy comes up for review.

The FMA has recalculated its hourly rate and says licensing fees will be set with a combination of a flat fee and an hourly rate for work beyond that.

“On balance, we believe that a flat fee plus an hourly rate will allow for an accurate cost recovery process for FMA and a fair fee for licensees. We expect the majority of market services providers will be submitting ‘standard applications’ and will only pay the flat fee. We envisage that the hourly rate on top of the flat fee would only be charged to providers who submit ‘resource intensive’ applications. The hourly rate will allow FMA to capture the outliers of the licensing regime rather than the majority of licensees.”

People charged more would be those who submitted incomplete applications or providers with large and complex legal structures or who were high-risk.

It says: “The hourly rate incorporates FMA resource costs. Licensing different types of market services providers will vary in complexity and time taken to process applications. The variation between FMA resource requirements for licensing each type of market services provider will determine the difference between the fees.”

It says the hourly rate is uses to calculate FMA fees has not been changed since 1998 and is no longer accurate. It wants to increase the rate from $166.62 to $178.25, including GST.

The FMA board member hourly rate would remain at $230.

At the moment it is not consulting on adviser fees administered under the Financial Advisers Act.

The FMA also proposes that fund managers pay $3565, derivative issuers $10,695, independent trustees of a restricted scheme $2139 and regulated intermediaries $6238 for their new licenses.