What is a ‘financial intruder’ and how to identify one
The performance of some activities in the financial field is reserved for people or companies that have to comply with a series of specific requirements established by the Law. This is what is popularly known as “activity reserve”. The Bank of Spain explains that its main objective is “to protect users of financial services, guarantee the proper functioning of the financial market and convey confidence that those who carry out “reserved activities” comply with current regulations.”
In our country, The Bank of Spain is responsible for controlling and supervising some of these activities.. This means that only people or companies that have authorization or those that are registered in their records are those that have permission to provide these services. If we did not have it we would be facing the known as “financial intruders”.
How to identify a financial intruder?
The most important thing to keep in mind to detect these financial intruders is that the reserved activities can only be carried out by companies or people who are registered in the Records of the Bank of Spain or that “they operate in Spain because they are authorized in another country of the European Union.” In the latter case, they will have to be registered in the Registries of the European Banking Authority
This means that these records will have to be consulted to find out the reserved activities that each entity can carry out and other relevant data, for example, the countries in which they operate.
One of the problems that you may have when hiring a person or company that is not authorized or registered is that, if you are not satisfied with their performance, the affected person will not be able to present “a claim before the Claims Service of the Bank of Spain”. And it will not be protected by the mechanisms of the Deposit Guarantee Fund for Credit Institutionswhich guarantees a total of 100,000 euros per owner and entity. The Bank of Spain also says that they are excluded from “the exceeded safeguard account or other comparable guarantee that payment institutions and electronic money institutions are obliged to contract.”
What are the reserved activities that the Bank of Spain supervises?
These are some of the reserved activities that the Bank of Spain is responsible for supervising in our country:
- The raising reimbursable funds from the public through bank accounts or deposits.
- Payment servicesthat is, transfers, sending money or cards.
- Electronic money issuance. Prepaid cards, electronic wallets, etc.
- Foreign currency exchange.
- Reverse mortgage marketing. Regulated in Law 41/2007.
- Intermediation services in the granting of real estate credit. Advice and granting of the loan is also included here.
- Activities with crypto assets. For example, issuance of asset-referenced tokens (ARTs) or electronic money tokens (EMTs).
