The FCA has announced that the proposed changes to the MIFID II Ancillary Activity Test that were scheduled for next year are suspended. However, removal of the requirement to notify the FCA of the use of the Ancillary Activity Exemption will go ahead. The notice can be found here.

The proposal for change involved moving to a qualitative test, away from the use of the market size and main business test. The change is now suspended and the old test will need to be used by UK firms instead. The compromise that takes into account issues with the market size data following Brexit will continue to be in force (see here).

The EU has moved to a new version of the test as part of the “quick fix” (see here).