MarketsFlow US expansion – major update: a very pleasant SEC regulatory surprise!!

MarketsFlow US expansion – major update: a very pleasant SEC regulatory surprise!!

Life at MarketsFlow HQ could not have been busier for the last few days, we have been constantly engaged with advisors from legal , taxation, formation, compliance and office location companies in Boston.

The response from the legal and taxation firms has been very impressive, and they are keenly looking forward to working with MarketsFlow and enabling our ambitious growth trajectory. Their immediate response has been “MarketsFlow is an upgraded version of Betterment and Future Advisor and it is bigger than Fintech play with a powerful proposition of fund management included”.

Our taxation advisory firm Wolf & Co has already put us in touch with local Boston VCs who focus on AI & ML, and within financial services. This will provide us the added leverage for our Series A in Jul-August timeframe.

We are simply amazed at the speed of response from Boston setup so far, and one which works very well for MarketsFlow’s rapid growth plans.

So now to the exciting update, we did not expect the regulatory and compliance structure to be such simplified in the US. As a firm you can file State level or Federal level SEC registration. MarketsFlow will be filing as RIA (Registered Investment Advisor) with IAR (Investment Advisory Representative) at Federal level. The usual requirements for a firm to apply at Federal level is having a minimum of $100m AUM, but we fall under exemption due to our Internet based platform offering. This also means that we can serve clients in the 50 states, without having to state file, we simply need to provide statutory notice-filing in each state.
The only condition for IAR has to undertake Series 65 examination.

The great news is that the RIA application takes 45 days for SEC to review and approve, and more importantly RIA is all we need to provide our advisory (platform sales to retail and institutions) as well as fund management (managed accounts and fund/wealth management) services.

This now means added acceleration in terms of revenue traction for MarketsFlow in the US. Bear in mind that in the UK we have applied for advisory and will later be applying for investment management application separately with FCA.

This has huge implications for MarketsFlow in terms of client servicing, we could on-board US as well as UK clients with MarketsFlow US entity within the next 3-4 months, in case our UK FCA approval is still under process.

This is fantastic news for MarketsFlow, its shareholders and clients.

Put it simply, we could not be more excited about the future for MarketsFlow.

Kind Regards
Tom & MarketsFlow team.

 

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