Liechtenstein Financial Market Authority to issue a general ruling keeping binary options ban and CFD conditions for non-professional investors from 1 February 2025

The Liechtenstein Financial Market Authority (FMA) announced that it will publish a general ruling to maintain its existing product intervention measures for certain binary options and contracts for difference (CFDs) offered to non-professional investors in and from Liechtenstein, while shifting the legal basis for those measures as part of the redesign of financial market law and the total revision of the Banking Act. The current regime prohibits the marketing, distribution and sale of certain binary options to non-professional investors and permits the marketing, distribution and sale of CFDs to non-professional investors only subject to compliance with certain conditions. Under the revised framework, product intervention is newly regulated and, consistent with Regulation (EU) No. 600/2014, the FMA will rely on a general ruling as the supervisory instrument under Article 25 of the Financial Market Supervision Act (FMAG); the draft general ruling is described as materially unchanged compared with the existing intervention. The FMA intends to publish the general ruling on its website on 1 February 2025 and issued the advance notice to ensure affected parties are heard. It also noted that individual notification is being dispensed with due to the large number of affected parties domiciled in Austria and other EEA countries, which cannot be identified without disproportionate effort.