The Property Crowd has been called up over financial reporting failures and deregistered. Photo: RNZ / Rebekah Parsons-King
The Financial Markets Authority has suspended the crowdfunding licence of The Property Crowd for breaches of its licensee obligations.
The authority (FMA) said The Property Crowd (TPC) had financial reporting failures, been deregistered from the Financial Service Providers Register and had ongoing compliance issues.
The FMA said as a result TPC was likely to materially contravene its licensee obligations, may not be able to effectively perform the services under its licenses and the conditions were met to suspend its licence.
Among the breaches, the FMA found TPC filed its financial reports late, it failed to file its annual return and failed to provide the authority with sufficient information about how the company would improve its systems and processes.
TPC was granted a licence by the FMA in October 2018 but has not hosted a successful offer meeting the minimum funding amount since, the authority said.
The FMA said no investors currently use its platform but in January 2021, a Singapore-based firm acquired a majority of TPC's shares, signalling an intention to relaunch its service.
"Ongoing non-compliance shows TPC has a poor understanding of its regulatory obligations and the ongoing lack of information from TPC hinders the FMA from effectively carrying out our supervisory functions," FMA acting director of capital markets Paul Gregory said.
"So, investors cannot make informed decisions about whether to invest on TPC's platform and their money could be at risk," he said.
