Yes, under one licensed firm. But the shared licence does not remove the local steps.
A tied agent is registered in the country where it is established, so the structure you choose decides how many registrations you run. Appoint one company as the tied agent and that is one registration. Appoint three individuals in three countries and that is three.
Established is a precise word here. It is not the same as where someone happens to be sitting this month. Where the people work, who employs them and who directs their work all feed into the answer, and they need to be mapped before you pick the structure.
Legal basis: Article 29(3) MiFID II.
A tied agent can be a company or an individual, and the choice matters more than it looks.
That company is the tied agent. Appointing a company as the tied agent does not automatically require each employee to be appointed separately as a tied agent. The company's country decides the register, and the licensed firm's supervision has to reach the people doing the work inside it. Competence and fitness of those individuals, and who supervises them, remain relevant.
Each one is a tied agent in their own right, registered where they are established. Three people in three countries means three registrations.
substnz is licensed in Germany. When a tied agent is established in another European country, German law handles this through a notification rather than a second licence application.
A German investment firm that wants to use tied agents established in another European Economic Area country has to tell BaFin and the Bundesbank. The notification describes what the agents will do and how they fit into the firm, including who reports to whom. BaFin then has up to three months from complete paperwork to pass the information to the regulator in the other country.
Those three months are a legal maximum for one step. They are not a service promise and not the whole timeline. They are the main reason a cross border setup takes longer than a German one.
Legal basis: § 70 Abs. 1 Nr. 2, Abs. 2 and Abs. 4 WpIG.
From first call to operational: 7 to 12 weeks where the tied agent is established in Germany, and 10 to 16 weeks where the tied agent is established in another EEA state. Both are best case ranges, and the clock starts once your due diligence documents are complete.
Adding a second country later is its own process with its own timeline. It is not an extension of the first one.
Setting France up for the first time sits outside these ranges. We quote that case individually.
substnz tied agents can be established in, and sell into, these markets: Germany, Austria, Belgium, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, France, Iceland, Ireland, Italy, Luxembourg, Malta, Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Spain and Sweden.
The register that applies is the one in the country where the agent sits. In Germany that is BaFin's register. In Luxembourg the CSSF keeps a register of tied agents established there. In the Netherlands the AFM registers them. In France the ACPR publishes a list of European firms that have appointed a French agent.
The AFM checks the individuals and charges fees, which substnz passes through at cost. The AFM also expects a tied agent company to have two people running the day-to-day business, though an exemption is possible.
An employer of record solves an employment problem. It does not create a licence and it does not answer who the tied agent is.
If your people are engaged through an employer of record, the question becomes who directs and supervises their regulated work, and how the licensed firm can exercise the oversight it answers for. Setups with shared staff, secondments, or resources sitting outside the licensed firm get particular attention from supervisors, so describe them accurately at the start rather than have them surface later.
Reference: ESMA Supervisory Briefing on tied agents (2022), paragraphs 21 to 25. That briefing supports scrutiny of substance, staffing, third-party control, staff sharing and secondment. It does not give a single answer for every employer-of-record arrangement.
No. For each country you need to decide whether the person there is an individually appointed tied agent or an employee of an appointed company, and you need to be able to show who directs their work. A company in each country is one way to do that, not a requirement.
Yes. European rules cover both individuals and companies. The registration and competence requirements apply either way, and for an individual they attach to that person directly.
No. Country coverage is about where the firm may operate. A new person still needs the registration, notification and any approval steps required for the proposed activities before they can start. The timelines above apply from the start of that process.
It depends on whether you appoint one company or three individuals. One appointed company established in one country is one registration, and the other two locations then raise the question of how that company operates there. Three individuals is three registrations. The structure decides the number, which is why mapping comes first.
substnz Capital Partners GmbH looks at each proposed setup through four questions: who is appointed, where they are established, where the work happens and who supervises it. Already covering a market is not the same as approving a particular new team, and we will not present it as if it were.
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