Section 3: Rules of good conduct

Financial investment advisers must:

1° Act honestly, loyally and professionally, in the best interests of their clients;

2° Exercise their activity, within the limits authorised by their status, with due skill, care and diligence, in the best interests of their clients, in order to provide them with a range of services that is appropriate and proportionate to their needs and objectives;

3° Ensure that they do not remunerate or evaluate the results of their employees in a way that is detrimental to their obligation to act in the best interests of their clients when providing the advice referred to in 1° or 3° of I of Article L. 541-1. In particular, financial investment advisors shall not make any arrangements in the form of remuneration, sales targets or otherwise that might encourage employees to recommend a particular financial instrument or investment service to a client when they could offer another financial instrument or investment service better suited to that client's needs;

4° Obtain from their clients or potential clients, before formulating an advice referred to in I of Article L. 541-1, the necessary information concerning their knowledge and experience in investment matters in relation to the specific type of financial instrument, transaction or service, their financial situation and their investment objectives, so as to be able to recommend transactions, financial instruments and investment services appropriate to their situation. Where clients or potential clients do not provide the required information, financial investment advisers shall refrain from recommending the transactions, instruments and services in question. When financial investment advisors provide the advice referred to in 1° or 3° of I of article L. 541-1, they must also obtain from their clients or potential clients the necessary information concerning their capacity to incur losses and their risk tolerance so as to be able to recommend to them the appropriate financial instruments and investment services and, in particular, those adapted to their risk tolerance and their capacity to incur losses. When the advice referred to in 1° or 3° of I of Article L. 541-1 leads to the recommendation of a bundled offer within the meaning of Article L. 533-12-1, financial investment advisors shall ensure that the bundled offer as a whole corresponds to the needs of their clients;

5° Provide clients in good time with appropriate information concerning the financial investment adviser and its services, where applicable the legal nature and extent of the relationship with the institutions promoting the products mentioned in 1° of Article L. 341-3, information useful for decision-making by these clients as well as information concerning the terms and conditions of their remuneration, in particular the pricing of their services;

6° Ensure that they understand the financial instruments that they offer or recommend, assess their compatibility with the needs of the clients to whom they provide advice as referred to in I of Article L. 541-1, particularly in terms of the target market defined, and ensure that financial instruments are only offered or recommended when it is in the client's interest;

7° When they inform their clients that the advice referred to in 1° of I of Article L. 541-1 is provided independently:

a) Evaluate a sufficient range of financial instruments available on the market that are sufficiently diversified in terms of their type and their issuers or suppliers to ensure that their clients' investment objectives can be appropriately met, and must not be limited to financial instruments issued or supplied by entities that have close links with themselves or other entities with which they have legal or economic relationships such as contractual relationships that are so close that they present a risk of impairing the independence of the advice provided ;

b) Not accept, unless they return them in full to their clients, any remuneration, commission or other monetary or non-monetary benefit in connection with the provision of the service to clients, paid or provided by a third party or by a person acting on behalf of a third party. Minor non-monetary benefits which are likely to enhance the quality of the service provided to a client, and which are of such a size and nature that they cannot be considered to prevent financial investment advisers from complying with their duty to act in the best interests of their clients, shall be clearly disclosed and shall not be subject to the requirements of this 7°;

8° Ensure that all information, including promotional communications, addressed to their clients, including potential clients, is accurate, clear and not misleading. Promotional communications must be clearly identifiable as such;

9° Formalise the advice referred to in I of Article L. 541-1 in a written statement of suitability justifying the various proposals, their advantages and the risks they entail on the basis of their clients' investment experience, financial situation and investment objectives;

10° Compile a file including the document(s) approved by themselves and their clients, including an engagement letter signed by both parties prior to the provision of the advice referred to in I of Article L. 541-1, setting out the rights and obligations of the parties and the other conditions under which the services are provided to clients. The rights and obligations of the parties to the contract may be determined by reference to other documents or legal texts;

11° Where they provide advice as referred to in 1° or 3° of I of Article L. 541-1, report to their clients, on a durable medium, on the services provided to them. The report shall include, where applicable, the costs associated with the services provided on behalf of the client. The report shall also include periodic communications to clients depending on the type and complexity of the financial instruments concerned and the nature of the service provided to clients.