Consultant register

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The consultant register is a central register with the Federal Financial Supervisory Authority (BaFin) in which all the investment adviser of German banks (more precisely, investment services companies ) are stored.

Legal basis

1 November 2012, added Art. 1 no. 9 of the Investor Protection and Improvement Act , the Securities Trading Act a § 34d Abs. 5 WpHG, which requires the BaFin for storage of registered advisers in a database. On December 21, 2011, the Bafin issued the WpHG Employee Notification Ordinance (WpHGMaAnzV). The regulation has been found in Section 87 (7) of the Securities Trading Act since 2018 .

Reporting obligations and procedure

Banks may only employ knowledgeable and reliable employees for investment advice, as sales representatives and as compliance employees. Banks must electronically report all employees in these fields of work to BaFin before starting work ( Section 87 WpHG and Section 7 WpHGMaAnzV). In addition, the banks are obliged to report all complaints raised against the employees concerned. This also applies to unjustified, clarified or withdrawn complaints by the customer.

BaFin stores this information in a central database. According to BaFin, around 206,000 bank employees (176,000 investment advisors, 27,500 sales representatives and 2,500 compliance officers) were affected in the first quarter of 2013.

Use of the database

BaFin has the right, if there are facts which show that reliability or expertise of staff is not available, and for this prohibition to speak, that is, to prohibit those working in these areas. The database should represent the information basis for this. BaFin sees the complaint database as an important risk indicator.

Between November 1, 2012 and March 31, 2013, around 5,000 complaints were recorded exclusively about investment advice (“ false advice ”) , according to BaFin .

Constitutional action

A constitutional complaint from the Volksbank Göppingen is pending against the register of advisers . The main points are the unequal treatment of bank advisors (who must be reported) and other financial distributors (who do not need to be reported) and the restriction of the basic right to freedom of occupation , since BaFin can impose occupational bans.

criticism

The Association of German Banks criticized associated with consultant Register bureaucracy and with regard to the injured principle of data economy -Problematik of data protection . He presented an alternative concept in the legislative process, but this was not taken into account.

The Association of German Protection Association for Securities Possession criticized the fact that consumers cannot find out in advance of their advice whether their adviser has already had a particularly large number of complaints. This means that mistakes cannot be prevented, only sanctioned. In addition, freelance financial advisors are not included.

At the data protection negative prize Big Brother Awards 2013, BaFin was named with the consultant register under the " reproachful mentions":

“The aim of protecting investors is to be achieved by putting pressure on the weakest link in the distribution chain. The pressure from employers and sales managers, which is the cause of many errors and complaints, is not recorded in the consultant register. "

- Big Brother Awards 2013

Web links

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Individual evidence

  1. ↑ WpHG Employee Notification Ordinance (WpHGMaAnzV)
  2. ↑ a b Between bankers' pillory and consumer protection. In: The world . dpa message, May 2, 2013, accessed on July 15, 2013 .
  3. ↑ Counter -draft of the banking association ( Memento of the original of June 4, 2012 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.  @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.bankenverband.de
  4. ↑ Well meant. Focus , November 7, 2012, accessed July 15, 2013 .
  5. ↑ Reprehensible mentions. Big Brother Awards , April 12, 2013, accessed July 15, 2013 .