Bank of Russia approves Basic Standard for Investment Advisers’ Operations in Financial Market

The Basic Standard drafted by sectoral self-regulatory organisations (SRO) is intended to separate investment consulting from other activities in the financial market, first of all from trading and analytics. This Standard sets out the characteristics of individual investment advice and additional requirements for investment advisers’ activity.

The Basic Standard also describes cases when information provided by advisers should not be recognised as investment advice.

This Standard sets down an approach to determining a client’s investment profile, which allows the investment adviser to take into account, among other things, the client’s preferences regarding acceptable risk. The method employed to determine the client’s investment profile should ensure that the investment adviser complies with good faith and reasonableness requirements and meets the client’s interests. In addition, the Standard allows one client to have several profiles, provided different investment objectives are specified.

This document is mandatory for compliance by all professional securities market participants providing investment consulting services, regardless of whether they are SRO members or not.

The institute of investment advisers was established at the end of 2018. As of now, the Bank of Russia’s register numbers 66 investment advisers.