- Regulated person & regulated product

Regulated person & regulated product

Written by Wilfred Ling

Saturday, 07 February 2009

Another person met me for consultation. Apparently this client was dealing with an unregulated financial adviser for sometime already. He was sold an MAS unregulated product. Not too long ago, that financial advisory company was eventually “chased” out of Singapore by MAS as they were not authorized to give advice in Singapore.

It is important for people to engage a regulated person and ensure the products purchased are MAS regulated. Engaging a regulated person & purchasing regulated products do not automatically mean that it is safer, better or provide higher return. In fact, it can be worse. However, if there is any complain, the investor has various recourse such as:

Complain to MAS which is obliged to investigate;
Go to FIRDEC for mediation if the amount involved is below certain sum;
Complain to your Member of Parliament;
Write to newspaper’s forum page;
Protest at Hong Lim; and
Take legal action against the company as a last resort.

If the matter concerned is unregulated,

Complaining to MAS can’t do much – at most MAS can do is to enter one more entry to its Investor Alert website warning people about the company;
Cannot go for any mediation since the product manufacturer does not even have a office here;
Member of Parliament probably don’t even know who to contact since the unregulated person cannot be found in Singapore already;
No point writing to forum to complain against someone who is not around;
No point protest at Hong Lim as nobody knows what you are protesting about since there is no entity in Singapore and
Cannot take legal action since the entity involved isn’t here.

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