Country Manual Private Banking – Germany Freistellung – BRP Update 2024
BRP has updated its Country Manual Private Banking for Germany Freistellung out of bank’s country of establishment (DEF, RS, BT and RT)
| Source of changes | Answers |
|---|---|
| Law / Regulation | No |
| New Position of the Authorities | Yes |
| Evolution of Expert’s Interpretation | Yes |
Regulatory Template, Regulatory Summary and Behaviour Template
Material changes
The Country Manual has been reviewed to ensure that the content of all the documents remains accurate and up to date. Following our local counsel’s our and assessment, we can confirm that there have been no major material changes or modifications in the relevant German regulation since the last update.
Nevertheless, we draw your attention to a current administrative practice of BaFin that lead us to include the following types of professional investors as “qualified prospects or clients” under the Freistellung regime (if so covered in BaFin’s Freistellung decision):
- Professional investors within the meaning of Section 1 (19) no. 32 German Investment Code, i.e., investors who are considered a professional client within the meaning of Annex II of Directive 2014/65/EU (MiFID II) or who can be treated as a professional client upon request; and
- Professional clients within the meaning of Section 67 (2), (6) Securities Trading Act.
Non-material changes
Some comments/conditions have been reworded and further non-material changes have been made throughout the documents.
Cooperation with third parties
We clarified an amended interpretation of local law that the introduction of the Bank’s custody services, (Depotgeschäft) by a local third party should not be considered as the licensable service of brokering of deposit business with undertakings domiciled in a state outside the European Economic Area (non-EEA state) (Drittstaateneinlagenvermittlung); hence, no specific license requirement should apply in this regard for the third party in Germany. Still, the introduction of deposit-taking business of a third-country bank will be qualified as brokering of deposit business to a non-EEA state (Drittstaateneinlagenvermittlung) under Section 1 (1a) no. 5 of the Banking Act and requires respective licensing.
Regulatory Summary
This document has now a more user-friendly layout and reflects the changes contained in the RT.
BT Short Comparison
BRP has created a comparison document allowing users to quickly identify the modifications made compared to the previous version of the PB Manual (BT Short Comparison). The BT Short Comparison can be found on BRP’s platform (mybrponline) in the Search tab by entering in the Document Field “CM PB BT SHORT COMP” and “GERMANY FREISTELLUNG” in the Target Country Field.
The BT Short Comparison should be read as follows:
The first column contains a short description of the activity in question. The second column contains the answers of the previous version of the Country Manual (online until the day of the alert). The third column contains the new answers of the most recent version of the Country Manual. Only the modified answers are displayed (in color). If the answers in the new version are unchanged compared to the previous version, they are shaded in grey.
For more information, please contact us: info@brpsa.com
Geneva, March 18th 2024