Financial Adviser Legislation

Some new laws designed to regulate financial advisers and improve the quality of financial advice become fully effective on 1 July 2011.

The primary legislation is called the Financial Advisers Act 2008 ("FAA") and also applies to the financial services we provide our customers at HSBC. Our current personalised service we offer customers remains unaffected by the new laws although we will have some new disclosure obligations which customers will become aware of when you next talk to us about our financial services.

Under the FAA, HSBC has been approved as a Qualifying Financial Entity (QFE).Our QFE status means that our relationship managers and employees do not need to be individually authorised and registered on the new Financial Service Providers Register. Instead HSBC will continue to take primary responsibility for the financial advisers service we provide to our customers.

As a QFE we are required to have a QFE disclosure statement which can be found here. Our QFE disclosure statement contains important information about the types of services and advice we offer our retail customers or clients which may help you decide whether to use our financial services. We recommend that you take time to read this important information.