New CIF reporting obligation – CA-CIF Form to CySEC

On the 20^th of May 2022, the Cyprus Securities and Exchange Commission (CySEC), introduced Circular C514, a new reporting obligation for Cyprus Investment Firms (CIF). The new report requires the collection of data on the CIF’s provision of investment services and activities to the clients, split by country. Thus, the new form is named Country Analysis Form (CA-CIF Form).

The new form requires the disclosure and analysis of various information related to the CIF’s clients, including methods of solicitation and marketing strategy, while also requiring information on employees’ remuneration during the reporting or the cumulative* reporting period.

In particular, the requested information is split into four sections:

• Clients’ Information per Country:
  • Number of retail clients serviced,
  • Analysis of the number of retail clients between those who were serviced only with CFD, only with non CFD or a combination of CFD and other financial instruments,
  • Net turnover, amount of deposits, amount of withdrawals and the percentage of withdrawals that were cancelled by clients out of the total number of withdrawals requested.
• Methods of solicitation of new clients:
  • The number of new clients serviced per country,
  • The client categorisation,
  • Analysis of the number of new clients, the number of deposits and the number of deposits per method of solicitation such as own marketing activities, related entities, tied agents, branches, affiliates, service providers and other means.
• Marketing Strategy:
  • Number of branches, representative offices or tied agents per country,
  • The marketing strategy methods employed, such as website, marketing material, calls, roadshows,
  • The languages used for the marketing of services per country.
• Employees’ remuneration:
  • Top 5 countries in terms of number of retail clients the CIF provided investment and ancillary services,
  • Top 5 remunerated employees relating to marketing and promotion of services, as well as customer support to the top 5 countries,
  • The percentage of variable remuneration compared to total remuneration for each of the above top 5 employees.

*The cumulative reporting period refers to the period starting from the 1^st of January of each year until the last day of the reporting period.

It is noted that the first two submissions to CySEC are required to be completed by the 8^th of July 2022 and concern the reference periods of the 4^th quarter of 2021 and the 1^st quarter of 2022 for the firms that were authorised by the 31^st of December 2021 and the 31^st of March 2022, respectively. All authorised Cyprus Investment Firms must submit the form, irrespective of whether they have used their authorisation during the reference periods.

With exception of the first two submissions, the reporting obligation will need to be prepared and submitted quarterly, six weeks after the end of each quarter. The below table indicates the relevant deadlines of the reporting obligation until the end of the year:

The CA-CIF Form must be completed in the English language, reporting data in Euro rounded to the nearest unit, and submitted through CySEC’s Transaction Reporting System (TRS) by 15:00 hrs. of the respective deadlines. The naming convention of the file must be in the form ‘Username_yyyymmdd_CA-CIF’, where the Username denotes the username of each CIF’s TRS credentials and the yyyymmdd the end of the corresponding reporting period.

For more regulatory obligations a CIF must meet in 2022 to comply with CySEC, please visit the SALVUS Regulatory Reporting Obligations Calendar.

The SALVUS Risk Management team can support you in the preparation of the Country Analysis Forms, on your behalf.

Contact us at info@salvusfunds.com or call us at +357 7000 7898 if you would like additional informaiton or require support with the submission of the CA-CIF Form.

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