The New Zealand Financial Markets Authority (FMA) has cancelled the crowdfunding services licence of Equitise Pty Ltd. The cancellation took effect on 3 April 2024.

The FMA found that:

• Equitise materially breached certain market services licensee obligations;
• A material change of circumstances occurred in relation to Equitise’s licence; and
• Equitise no longer meets certain statutory requirements including the requirement that it is capable of effectively performing its crowd funding service and there is no reason to believe Equitise is likely to breach its licensee obligations.

Matters on which the FMA relied included Equitise’s failure to provide its financial reporting and agreed upon procedures reporting, as well as the firm’s deregistration from the Financial Service Providers Register (FSPR). The firm has history of non-compliance with various legislative and other obligations.

Equitise failed to file its audited 2023 financial statements by 30 October 2023. It also failed to provide the FMA with a copy of its 2023 annual agreed upon procedures report and other information. Those financial statements, the report and the required information remain outstanding.

In August last year, Equitise was deregistered from the FSPR for failing to file its annual confirmation within the required timeframe. Despite being deregistered, Equitise continued to provide crowd funding services, facilitating two offers, which it was not able to do lawfully following its deregistration. Equitise remains deregistered from the FSPR.

For these reasons, and Equitise’s history of repeated compliance failures, the FMA determined that cancelling Equitise’s licence was the appropriate, fair, and proportionate action.