Created
Nov 28, 2023
Conflict of interest policy
In accordance with the MiFID II Directive, Article L. 54-10-5 I 4° of the French Monetary and Financial Code and Article 721-9 of the General Regulations of the French Financial Markets Authority (Autorité des marchés financiers), Palisade Financial SAS (the “Company” or “Palisade”) has established this Conflict-of-Interest Policy (the “Policy”). This Policy is available to clients and prospects, as well as to other stakeholders of the Company.
This document details how the Company minimises and addresses conflicts of interest. It provides details on the various means used to ensure the effective implementation of procedures for identifying, preventing and managing conflicts of interest.
1. Purpose and scope of the policy
The Policy defines the Company’s procedures and clearly identifies circumstances that may give rise to conflicts of interest, where the Company cannot assure, with reasonable confidence, that the risk of harm to the client’s interests will be avoided.
The Policy identifies the types of potential conflicts of interest that may arise on the technology interface operated by the Company via the https://www.palisade.co/portal. The Policy describes the procedure for such identification and the steps taken by the Company.
The Policy is set out in writing and is appropriate to the size and organisation of the Company and the nature, scale and complexity of our business.
The Policy applies to the Company and its officers, employees and any other person directly or indirectly controlled by the Company (the “Connected Persons”).
As minimum criteria, the Company considers the following situations:
the Company and/or a Connected Person has an interest in the outcome of a service provided to the client that is contrary to the client’s interest;
the Company and/or a Connected Person have a financial or other incentive to favour the interest of a particular client or group of clients at the expense of its other clients;
the Company and/or Connected Person have a financial or other incentive that causes them to overlook vigilance measures thus resulting in increased financial crime risk exposure;
the Company and/or Connected Person receive, or will receive, from any person, other than the client, an inducement in connection with a service provided to the client, in the form of money, goods or services, other than the standard commission or fee consummate for that service;
the Policy identifies the procedures and measures taken by the Company that are designed to ensure that Connected Persons engaged in various business activities involving a conflict of interest (as specified above) perform those activities at a level of independence appropriate to the Company’s size and business.
The procedures in the Policy are intended to:
prevent and monitor the exchange of information between Connected Person engaged in activities involving a potential conflict of interest when the exchange of such information may adversely affect the interests of one or more clients;
separate the supervision of Connected Person whose primary duties involve performing activities on behalf of, or providing services to, clients whose interests may conflict, or who otherwise represent different interests that may conflict, including those of the Company;
eliminate any direct link between the compensation of Connected Person engaged primarily in one activity and the compensation or income generated by other Connected Person engaged primarily in another activity, where a conflict of interest may arise in connection with these different activities;
take steps to prevent or limit the ability of any person to exercise improper influence over the manner in which a Connected Person performs services.
counter the risk of the Connected Person causing the Company to fail in its obligations of preventing money laundering and terrorist financing.
2. Identification of potential sources of conflict of interest
Considering the services offered by the Company, potential sources of conflict of interest may arise in the following cases:
the Company may provide services to clients who may have interests in digital assets that conflict or compete with the interests of other clients of the Company;
commissions, remuneration, gifts, etc. granted or paid to the Company’s employees by the Company, based on their performance, may negatively affect the Client and encourage more or less aggressive marketing tactics or drive concealment of important vigilance information, especially if such information will result in refusal of service;
remuneration and/or incentives granted or paid to third parties (e.g., business introducers) on the basis of recommendations, referrals and/or integration of new clients, which may negatively affect the Client and encourage aggressive marketing tactics;
compensation and/or incentives granted or paid to third parties who provide services under an outsourcing arrangement, if such compensation induces practices contrary to the interests of the Company’s clients;
Palisade’s employees may have access to the clients confidential information which could be used for their personal benefit, jeopardizing the client’s capacity to provide its own clients with a fair and honest information;
Palisade’s employees are known to have close connections / relationships with the Client through self-disclosure and/or general knowledge of their personal / professional network which may cause high risk indicators to be overlooked or concealed.
Given the involvement of Mr. Manthan Dave and Mr. Thomas Kiddle in both the English parent company (Palisade Financial Ltd (UK)) and its French subsidiary (Palisade Financial SAS (France)), there is a potential for conflicts of interest to arise in the following ways:
Business interests: Mr. Dave and Mr. Kiddle may have outside business interests that compete with or overlap with the activities of the Palisade group. For example, they may have investments in companies that are in the same or related industries, or they may serve as advisors or consultants to other companies in the same field.
Time sharing: Mr. Dave and Mr. Kiddle may devote too much time to one entity and not enough to the other, which would be detrimental to the injured company with respect to its needs.
Financial relationships: Mr. Dave and Mr. Kiddle may have financial relationships with clients or suppliers of the group that could create a conflict of interest. For example, they may have personal or professional relationships with key clients or suppliers.
Personal relationships: Mr. Dave and Mr. Kiddle may have personal relationships with individuals who are involved with the group or its clients, such as friends or family members. These relationships could create a conflict of interest if they lead to favoritism or bias in decision-making.
It should be noted that the above scenarios do not necessarily give rise to a “conflict of interest” or any material harm to the client but are disclosed in the interest of full transparency. The above scenarios should be considered in relation to the procedures and measures implemented by the Company to manage or limit their impact.
3. Conflict of interest management
The Company has organisational and administrative procedures to manage and prevent any conflict of interest that may arise and could constitute or result in a risk of harm to its clients.
This section of the Policy will describe the actions taken by the Company in general, as well as those taken in relation to the above list of identified potential conflicts of interest.
3.1. General measures
The Company has procedures in place for the employment of persons who are considered knowledgeable and competent, and for the training of such employees;
The Company will prohibit employees with close personal or professional relationships with the Client from participating in the assessment, due diligence and establishing of the business relationship.
The Company will implement procedures to monitor third parties/outsourced service providers to ensure that they are competent to perform the services assigned to them;
The Company will implement a separation of departments/functions providing services to clients whose interests may conflict with those of other clients or with the Company’s interests;
The Company will ensure that no single employee has responsibilities with conflicting interests; otherwise known as “segregation of duties” where relevant;
The Company respects the confidentiality of information it receives from and about its clients and applies a “need to know” approach. Access to confidential information is limited to those whose job requires them to have access to it, in a proportionate and limited manner;
The Company may establish “Chinese walls” to physically separate key departments of the Company in order to restrict the flow of confidential information within the Company;
The Company has established an internal compliance function whose responsibilities include monitoring and reporting on KYC-AML procedures and the Policy, as well as identifying potential conflicts of interest and making recommendations for their management/limitation. The compliance function is also responsible for legal monitoring to ensure that the Company complies with applicable legislation;
The Company will apply the “four eyes” principle in the supervision of its activities, which consists in assigning the different verification steps to different people.
The Company will provide training to all employees on the importance of AML, severity of concealment of information and self-declaration of close connections. Enhanced training will be provided to employees whose roles have increased conflict of interest risk exposure.
To prevent any conflicts of interest due to the involvement of Mrs. Dave and Kiddle both at the parent company (Palisade Financial Ltd (UK)) and subsidiary level (Palisade Financial SAS (France)), they should – as the case may be – disclose any outside business interests or financial relationships that may pose a conflict with their duties and responsibilities within the Palisade group. This disclosure should be made to the relevant parties, including senior management and the Board of Directors, as appropriate. Moreover, Mrs. Dave and Kiddle must allocate sufficient time and resources to both companies based on their needs.
3.2. Measures relating to the Company’s potential relation with third party service providers
The Company is committed to transparency in its selection of the third-party service providers. Palisade’s clients should know whether the Company has any incentive to recommend a particular service because of its financial compensation related to the number of clients that choose said service.
To ensure impartiality, the selection of third-party services providers must be made by persons who have no conflicting interest and must be based solely on objective criteria such as the quality of the service provided.
3.3. Measures relating to incentives, commissions, remuneration, gifts, etc.
Employee compensation policy
In accordance with current legislation, the Company does not base the variable compensation of its employees on factors that could create a conflict of interest with the clients with whom they are in contact.
For employees paid a variable portion, this is therefore based on objective performance indicators within their departments. Any bonuses or one-off payments are at the discretion of senior management/ the Board and are only disclosed to that employee at the time of payment.
4. Conflict of Interest Disclosure
When the Company becomes aware of a conflict of interest that may arise and when the organisational and administrative arrangements established by the Company to prevent or manage such conflict are not sufficient to ensure, with reasonable confidence, that the risk of harm to the client’s interests will be avoided, the Company will disclose such risk to its clients.
Where disclosure of such a conflict is not sufficient to manage the conflict, the Company may elect, in its sole discretion, not to proceed with the transaction or business relationship giving rise to the conflict.
The Company reserves the right to amend this Policy whenever it deems appropriate.
Conflict of interest policy
In accordance with the MiFID II Directive, Article L. 54-10-5 I 4° of the French Monetary and Financial Code and Article 721-9 of the General Regulations of the French Financial Markets Authority (Autorité des marchés financiers), Palisade Financial SAS (the “Company” or “Palisade”) has established this Conflict-of-Interest Policy (the “Policy”). This Policy is available to clients and prospects, as well as to other stakeholders of the Company.
This document details how the Company minimises and addresses conflicts of interest. It provides details on the various means used to ensure the effective implementation of procedures for identifying, preventing and managing conflicts of interest.
1. Purpose and scope of the policy
The Policy defines the Company’s procedures and clearly identifies circumstances that may give rise to conflicts of interest, where the Company cannot assure, with reasonable confidence, that the risk of harm to the client’s interests will be avoided.
The Policy identifies the types of potential conflicts of interest that may arise on the technology interface operated by the Company via the https://www.palisade.co/portal. The Policy describes the procedure for such identification and the steps taken by the Company.
The Policy is set out in writing and is appropriate to the size and organisation of the Company and the nature, scale and complexity of our business.
The Policy applies to the Company and its officers, employees and any other person directly or indirectly controlled by the Company (the “Connected Persons”).
As minimum criteria, the Company considers the following situations:
the Company and/or a Connected Person has an interest in the outcome of a service provided to the client that is contrary to the client’s interest;
the Company and/or a Connected Person have a financial or other incentive to favour the interest of a particular client or group of clients at the expense of its other clients;
the Company and/or Connected Person have a financial or other incentive that causes them to overlook vigilance measures thus resulting in increased financial crime risk exposure;
the Company and/or Connected Person receive, or will receive, from any person, other than the client, an inducement in connection with a service provided to the client, in the form of money, goods or services, other than the standard commission or fee consummate for that service;
the Policy identifies the procedures and measures taken by the Company that are designed to ensure that Connected Persons engaged in various business activities involving a conflict of interest (as specified above) perform those activities at a level of independence appropriate to the Company’s size and business.
The procedures in the Policy are intended to:
prevent and monitor the exchange of information between Connected Person engaged in activities involving a potential conflict of interest when the exchange of such information may adversely affect the interests of one or more clients;
separate the supervision of Connected Person whose primary duties involve performing activities on behalf of, or providing services to, clients whose interests may conflict, or who otherwise represent different interests that may conflict, including those of the Company;
eliminate any direct link between the compensation of Connected Person engaged primarily in one activity and the compensation or income generated by other Connected Person engaged primarily in another activity, where a conflict of interest may arise in connection with these different activities;
take steps to prevent or limit the ability of any person to exercise improper influence over the manner in which a Connected Person performs services.
counter the risk of the Connected Person causing the Company to fail in its obligations of preventing money laundering and terrorist financing.
2. Identification of potential sources of conflict of interest
Considering the services offered by the Company, potential sources of conflict of interest may arise in the following cases:
the Company may provide services to clients who may have interests in digital assets that conflict or compete with the interests of other clients of the Company;
commissions, remuneration, gifts, etc. granted or paid to the Company’s employees by the Company, based on their performance, may negatively affect the Client and encourage more or less aggressive marketing tactics or drive concealment of important vigilance information, especially if such information will result in refusal of service;
remuneration and/or incentives granted or paid to third parties (e.g., business introducers) on the basis of recommendations, referrals and/or integration of new clients, which may negatively affect the Client and encourage aggressive marketing tactics;
compensation and/or incentives granted or paid to third parties who provide services under an outsourcing arrangement, if such compensation induces practices contrary to the interests of the Company’s clients;
Palisade’s employees may have access to the clients confidential information which could be used for their personal benefit, jeopardizing the client’s capacity to provide its own clients with a fair and honest information;
Palisade’s employees are known to have close connections / relationships with the Client through self-disclosure and/or general knowledge of their personal / professional network which may cause high risk indicators to be overlooked or concealed.
Given the involvement of Mr. Manthan Dave and Mr. Thomas Kiddle in both the English parent company (Palisade Financial Ltd (UK)) and its French subsidiary (Palisade Financial SAS (France)), there is a potential for conflicts of interest to arise in the following ways:
Business interests: Mr. Dave and Mr. Kiddle may have outside business interests that compete with or overlap with the activities of the Palisade group. For example, they may have investments in companies that are in the same or related industries, or they may serve as advisors or consultants to other companies in the same field.
Time sharing: Mr. Dave and Mr. Kiddle may devote too much time to one entity and not enough to the other, which would be detrimental to the injured company with respect to its needs.
Financial relationships: Mr. Dave and Mr. Kiddle may have financial relationships with clients or suppliers of the group that could create a conflict of interest. For example, they may have personal or professional relationships with key clients or suppliers.
Personal relationships: Mr. Dave and Mr. Kiddle may have personal relationships with individuals who are involved with the group or its clients, such as friends or family members. These relationships could create a conflict of interest if they lead to favoritism or bias in decision-making.
It should be noted that the above scenarios do not necessarily give rise to a “conflict of interest” or any material harm to the client but are disclosed in the interest of full transparency. The above scenarios should be considered in relation to the procedures and measures implemented by the Company to manage or limit their impact.
3. Conflict of interest management
The Company has organisational and administrative procedures to manage and prevent any conflict of interest that may arise and could constitute or result in a risk of harm to its clients.
This section of the Policy will describe the actions taken by the Company in general, as well as those taken in relation to the above list of identified potential conflicts of interest.
3.1. General measures
The Company has procedures in place for the employment of persons who are considered knowledgeable and competent, and for the training of such employees;
The Company will prohibit employees with close personal or professional relationships with the Client from participating in the assessment, due diligence and establishing of the business relationship.
The Company will implement procedures to monitor third parties/outsourced service providers to ensure that they are competent to perform the services assigned to them;
The Company will implement a separation of departments/functions providing services to clients whose interests may conflict with those of other clients or with the Company’s interests;
The Company will ensure that no single employee has responsibilities with conflicting interests; otherwise known as “segregation of duties” where relevant;
The Company respects the confidentiality of information it receives from and about its clients and applies a “need to know” approach. Access to confidential information is limited to those whose job requires them to have access to it, in a proportionate and limited manner;
The Company may establish “Chinese walls” to physically separate key departments of the Company in order to restrict the flow of confidential information within the Company;
The Company has established an internal compliance function whose responsibilities include monitoring and reporting on KYC-AML procedures and the Policy, as well as identifying potential conflicts of interest and making recommendations for their management/limitation. The compliance function is also responsible for legal monitoring to ensure that the Company complies with applicable legislation;
The Company will apply the “four eyes” principle in the supervision of its activities, which consists in assigning the different verification steps to different people.
The Company will provide training to all employees on the importance of AML, severity of concealment of information and self-declaration of close connections. Enhanced training will be provided to employees whose roles have increased conflict of interest risk exposure.
To prevent any conflicts of interest due to the involvement of Mrs. Dave and Kiddle both at the parent company (Palisade Financial Ltd (UK)) and subsidiary level (Palisade Financial SAS (France)), they should – as the case may be – disclose any outside business interests or financial relationships that may pose a conflict with their duties and responsibilities within the Palisade group. This disclosure should be made to the relevant parties, including senior management and the Board of Directors, as appropriate. Moreover, Mrs. Dave and Kiddle must allocate sufficient time and resources to both companies based on their needs.
3.2. Measures relating to the Company’s potential relation with third party service providers
The Company is committed to transparency in its selection of the third-party service providers. Palisade’s clients should know whether the Company has any incentive to recommend a particular service because of its financial compensation related to the number of clients that choose said service.
To ensure impartiality, the selection of third-party services providers must be made by persons who have no conflicting interest and must be based solely on objective criteria such as the quality of the service provided.
3.3. Measures relating to incentives, commissions, remuneration, gifts, etc.
Employee compensation policy
In accordance with current legislation, the Company does not base the variable compensation of its employees on factors that could create a conflict of interest with the clients with whom they are in contact.
For employees paid a variable portion, this is therefore based on objective performance indicators within their departments. Any bonuses or one-off payments are at the discretion of senior management/ the Board and are only disclosed to that employee at the time of payment.
4. Conflict of Interest Disclosure
When the Company becomes aware of a conflict of interest that may arise and when the organisational and administrative arrangements established by the Company to prevent or manage such conflict are not sufficient to ensure, with reasonable confidence, that the risk of harm to the client’s interests will be avoided, the Company will disclose such risk to its clients.
Where disclosure of such a conflict is not sufficient to manage the conflict, the Company may elect, in its sole discretion, not to proceed with the transaction or business relationship giving rise to the conflict.
The Company reserves the right to amend this Policy whenever it deems appropriate.