Investment Intermediaries Act, 1995

Obligations on product producers.

28.—(1) A product producer may not appoint an investment product intermediary to act on its behalf in the reception or transmission of orders in the instruments referred to in section 4 (2)(a) to (c) or shares in a company or bonds which are listed on a stock exchange, or prize bonds or in acting as a deposit agent or as a deposit broker or any or all of these, and may not pay any commission, fee or other reward to an investment product intermediary, or accept any orders transmitted by an investment product intermediary on behalf of a client, unless to the best of the product producer's knowledge and belief, having caused reasonable enquiry to be made, the investment product intermediary—

(a) is a member of an approved representative body specified by the Minister for Enterprise and Employment whose rules require compliance with the terms of this Act, or

(b) is a certified person, or

(c) otherwise complies with the terms of this Act and is of good character.

(2) A product producer may for the purposes of subsection (1) of this section assume that an investment product intermediary, not being a restricted activity investment product intermediary, which is authorised for that activity by a supervisory authority under section 10 of this Act, or by a competent authority in another Member State, complies with the terms of this Act.

(3) It shall be an offence for a person to provide false or misleading information for the purposes of obtaining an appointment for the purposes of section 27 of this Act.

(4) Where any payment in any form is made to or through an investment product intermediary, such that a receipt is required to be issued under section 30 of this Act, the payment shall be treated as having been paid to the relevant product producer when the investment product intermediary takes receipt of the payment:

Provided that the investment product intermediary has a written appointment from that product producer.