Mutuals Register charges consultation

The Financial Services Authority consults every year on their proposals for regulatory fees and levies. Most years with the exception of those bodies connected with the financial industry this is of little interest to our members.

This year however is different. Chapter 10 pages 65 and 66 (see attached PDF) refer to charges relating to the Mutuals Public Register – this is a new service whereby documents such as annual returns and rulebooks will be available to be downloaded from the FSA's website. Currently only limited details of societies can be view on line at http://mutuals.fsa.gov.uk

Co-operatives UK has been pushing the FSA to have this service available for some time, and we understand it will be launched shortly.

In the mean time the FSA are asking how much they should charge for downloading documents.

It is not considered cost effective to scan existing archive documents. The plan is to scan all the main types of new document as they are received. Existing documents can be requested and once they are will also be provided online, so over time the number of available documents will grow.

The proposed fees on a per document basis are:

• £20 per document which require scanning for the first time.
• £12 per document available for immediate download.

The question posed is :

Do you have any comments on the proposed charges for access to public records through the Mutuals Public Register?

When responding you might want to consider the following: Companies House have been providing an online service for well over 10 years. Companies House Direct is a subscription service which currently costs £5 a month and £1 - £2 per document. When this service was first launched the fees for document were considerably more and have been reduced over the years as the services has become more cost effective.

Responses must be received by 28^th February 2011

We would encourage you to respond directly to the FSA by emailing them at: cp11_02@fsa.gov.uk or by completing the online form on their website http://www.fsa.gov.uk/pages/Library/Policy/CP/2011/cp11_02_response.shtml.

It would be helpful if you could also send a copy of your response to helen.barber@uk.coop