Reverse inquiry

To the unsuspecting, a topic to be approached with great caution but to cross-border boxwallahs with much antipicatory licking of the lips. It’s all about one’s regulatory perimeter — a topic which will bore many people to tears, but provides a luxuriant lifestyle to the kind of attorney (aka a bross-border boxwallah) who can break through that outer crust of stale, doughy tedium and into the delicious, weed-strewn details of cross-border regulation.

Now if a fellow sets herself up to provide regulated financial services in, oooh, I don’t know, say the United Kingdom, subject to and all watched over by the machines of loving grace of the Financial Conduct Authority, then musst she withhold her services from someone who reaches out from foreign shores to ask for them? Must she worry about the financial services regulations of that far-away place?

The answer question depends on the regulatory “perimeter” of that foreign jurisdiction. Normally, it will coincide with the physical borders of the country: as long as our fellow doesn’t provide her serrvices in that jurisdiction she will not be subject to its laws and regulations.

These days, the mod cons - telephony, the world-wide internet - makes it all so much harder. What if our fellow stays in England and the client stays in its jurisdiction? Where then is the business conducted?