Who this helps
- - Founders
- - Compliance teams
- - Students
- - Investors doing due diligence
NBFI is an ecosystem, not one licence
The FSB describes non-bank financial intermediation as a diverse ecosystem of activities, entities, and infrastructures. For LicenseCompare users, the practical lesson is simple: NBFI is not a licence category. It is a system-level way to think about finance outside traditional deposit-taking banks.
An asset manager, broker, adviser, market operator, finance company, pension fund, insurer, or fund platform may all sit inside the NBFI ecosystem, but each can face very different licensing, conduct, capital, and disclosure rules.
Why licensing still starts with facts
NBFI policy discussions often focus on systemic risk, leverage, liquidity mismatch, maturity transformation, and market stress. A licensing application is narrower. It asks what this entity will do, for which clients, through which people, with what controls.
That is why LicenseCompare links NBFI learning pages to activity-specific licensing pages. The concept helps users understand the system, while the licensing pages help users prepare a practical application discussion.
Practical checklist
- - Identify whether the business is a fund, adviser, broker, dealer, custodian, platform, market operator, finance company, or hybrid.
- - Separate system-level NBFI vocabulary from licence-level regulator vocabulary.
- - Map the entity, activity, client, product, asset flow, and compensation before choosing a route.
Disclaimer
Information on LicenseCompare is for general educational purposes only and does not constitute legal, regulatory, financial, tax, investment, or professional advice. Licensing requirements depend on facts and change over time. Always consult official regulator materials and qualified professional advisers.