Requirements are added to the status – Kommersant FM

The Central Bank plans to tighten rules for qualified investors. The property qualification for assigning this status will increase from the current 6 million rubles. up to 12 million rubles next year. And in 2025 – even up to 24 million rubles. This follows from the draft instructions published by the Bank of Russia. He explains the decision by inflation, which has accumulated since 2015, when the requirements were introduced. In addition, the regulator plans to combat the practice of recognizing investors as qualified without checking their actual understanding of complex financial products.

Will stricter requirements help? Dmitry Lesnov, head of the client service development department at Finam Financial Group, is not sure about this: “The property qualification cannot in any way characterize an investor as qualified; after all, knowledge is obtained through experience and various tests.

This increase will not provide any protection; moreover, we understand that the status of a qualified investor does not always allow you to increase the risks on your portfolio, but, on the contrary, even reduce it. That is, if clients have access to operations with short positions, trading with futures, options, which can also act as an element of hedging, then tightening the use of these instruments by increasing the property qualification, of course, reduces the investment opportunities of citizens.

The number of qualified investors is less than 2% of all registered clients, but the concentration of their assets is about 70%. Most of those who wanted it have already received this status.

The changes that the Central Bank is now proposing will only contribute to a rapid increase in the influx of potential qualified investors in 2024, because we need to make it before the end of the year.”

The status of a qualified investor gives you immediate access to all instruments on the exchange. It even allowed transactions with foreign assets, but after sanctions against the St. Petersburg Exchange, all Russians were deprived of this opportunity.

There are several ways to obtain status. In addition to confirming property worth 6 million rubles, the broker will assign qualifications to those who have specialized education or relevant work experience. Financial market expert Andrei Barkhota believes that the Central Bank will continue to push investors to acquire new knowledge: “In fact, investments to obtain the status of a qualified investor are fraught with large losses. 6 million rub. – this is one thing, but, let’s say, 24 million rubles. – completely different. Losses grow in proportion to the volume of the portfolio.

In essence, the position of the Bank of Russia is not to increase the volume of exposure, because this increases the risks, namely to encourage the majority of market players to voluntarily become qualified investors.

Especially considering that the relevant exams and testing are compiled by the Central Bank, and this is not certification by the Federal Service for Financial Markets, this is a completely simplified, adapted version.

In the future, the role of this educational qualification will simply grow, and they will most likely simply improve. The procedure itself will be operationally simplified and made better; I think that the exam and training itself will also be simplified. This will probably encourage people to focus on testing and education.”

The Central Bank has previously proposed tightening qualification rules, but this caused a lot of controversy in the industry. The National Association of Stock Market Participants considered the changes ill-timed, pointing out that such investors had become the main driving force on the exchange, and new problems for them would reduce liquidity and slow down the development of the industry.

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Ivan Yakunin