The President of Russia signed the law "On Concluding Financial Transactions Using the Financial Platform", as well as a number of relevant amendments to regulations.
According to the law, a financial platform is understood as an information system that ensures the interaction of financial institutions or issuers with consumers of financial services via the Internet in order to ensure the possibility of financial transactions and access to which is provided by the operator of the financial platform.
By registering in the system, citizens will be able to carry out a number of operations: conclude transactions for the provision of banking, insurance services, services on the securities market, make transactions with financial instruments, open deposits in different banks and transfer funds. Issuers can also offer financial transactions with their securities through the financial platform.
Financial platforms must have their own rules, which are a merger agreement and must be registered with the Bank of Russia. The operator of the financial platform, which can only be a legal entity registered in the form of a joint stock company, with its own funds of at least 100 million rubles, must ensure the execution of transactions between the participants of the financial platform, as well as the information duty of the platform. The operator acquires its status only after being included in the register of the Bank of Russia.
The operator does not have the right to combine its activities with the activities of a credit institution, with the exception of the activities of a trade organizer, depositary, specialized depository or registrar, and cannot be a party to financial transactions made using the financial platform. The operator must make all settlements only using a special account for conducting transactions with client funds.
The law also defines the requirements for posting information on financial transactions. This information cannot contain any guarantees or promises of future return on investments (except for fixed income products), mislead consumers or contain information that is not true. When making a transaction, the consumer must be informed of all the costs of making it. At the same time, the remuneration of the operator of the financial platform or other conflict of interest should not affect the placement of information on financial transactions by him by comparing their conditions and the results of such comparison.
The Bank of the Russian Federation has high hopes that this law will increase competition among financial service providers and provide access to the market for small and medium-sized players who do not have the funds to develop their digital ecosystems