ASIC has suspended the Australian financial services (AFS) license held by Halifax Investment Services Pty Ltd (Halifax). The license was suspended for a year until January 10, 2020. It happened only six weeks after this retail FX brokerage went into insolvency administration on November 23, 2018.
As we have previously reported, going into administration followed the appointment of Morgan Kelly, Stewart McCallum, and Phil Quinlan, of Ferrier Hodgson, as joint voluntary administrators of Halifax. The website of the Halifax Investment Services was closed for “maintenance” and the investments of the clients have been frozen. The administrators stated that after license suspension, the investors’ loss may be between AUD 10-20 million.
Halifax Investment Services Pty Ltd (Halifax), was a financial services licensee headquartered in Sydney with a partially-owned subsidiary in Auckland, New Zealand. It has been providing various financial products in a range of asset classes, including stocks, options, futures, foreign exchange, and contracts for difference; and trade finance and currency exchange services.
The terms of the AFS licence suspension allow the Halifax AFS licence to continue in effect for the following purposes only: to ensure that clients of Halifax continue to have access to an external dispute resolution scheme; to ensure that Halifax continues to be required to have arrangements for compensating retail clients, including the holding of professional indemnity insurance cover; and to allow for the termination of existing arrangements with clients of Halifax.