Think way, way back to our January 2022 bulletin, where we wrote about the final changes to the Outside Business Activities (OBA) framework, effective as of June 6, 2022. Two months have just flown by, and so will the time between now and June.

The amendments to National Instrument 33-109 Registration Information and National Instrument 31-103 Registration Requirements, Exemptions and Ongoing Registrant Obligations establish rules for the newly coined “Outside Activities”. Going forward, there will be five categories of activities that will be considered Outside Activities, and so it is likely that individual registration forms currently filed with the regulators (Form 33-109F4 Registration of Individuals and Review of Permitted Individuals) include activities that are no longer reportable. It is equally possible that these forms, particularly if they are quite old, may be missing information that is now required to be included (such as any business titles and professional designations in use).

Registrants will be provided until June 5, 2023, to update their individual information forms to comply with the new requirements. However, if a reportable change in an individual’s form occurs between June 6, 2022, and June 5, 2023, then that change will require the registrant to review and update all information in the form at that time to ensure it is compliant with the new requirements. Depending on the last update of the form, the volume of changes required, as well as the number of registrants at any particular firm, these updates could be quite a substantial undertaking. In addition, firms should be reviewing their policies and procedures and training materials to ensure everyone is up to speed on the new reportable activities.

Chief Compliance Officers may wish to start considering how best to start their internal reviews of these forms in the coming weeks.

Your friendly AUM lawyer would be pleased to assist with any or all of the above tasks, just reach out to any one of our team members.

March 31, 2022