Colombia Proposes Changes to Financial Regulations Affecting Representative Offices
Leer en Español: Colombia propone cambios regulaciones financieras que afectan oficinas de representación
Colombia's Financial Regulation Unit (La Unidad de Regulación Financiera, or URF) presented a proposal that contains several modifications to the Colombian financial regulations related to Representative Offices.
The purpose of the new regulation is to amend the representative office and correspondent agreement regulations to better meet the needs of investors and clients. Under the proposal, Representative Offices would be limited to promoting products and services provided from abroad to "professional investors." All responsibility for consummating the transactions will remain with the foreign firm. Further, it is proposed that any foreign product or service to be promoted by the Representative Office must be entered into a public registry in Colombia under the control of the regulator.
Before finalizing amendments to the regulations, the Colombian government has requested a comprehensive analysis by capital markets experts. Pursuant to the information available, such analysis will be issued in July 2019 and the government plans to issue the new regulations on Aug. 7, 2019.
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