So far, Smartlands delivered on every promise and fulfilled every obligation we had to you, our investors, community, friends. We built a global platform for crowdfunding investments through the issuance of security tokens, we’ve compiled a pipeline of properties ready to be tokenized, we’ve redesigned our wallet from the ground up and deployed several new features redefining your entire experience with Smartlands. With the recent onboarding of Onfido, the KYC process has been streamlined to a mere few minutes. Alas, the last step – the launch of the STO of shares in the student accommodation property in Nottingham, UK – is taking longer than we expected.

The hold up is based on the need of Smartlands to have Approved Persons, who are people in the company that have been approved by the FCA as “fit and proper” to carry out “controlled functions” such as being a Director (CF01) of a regulated company or a CF30. This is “the customer-dealing function that regulates how financial firms provide advisory services to their customers.” Any financial services company must have at least one Approved Person, and we are waiting to be approved as CF01s and CF30s.

However we feel about this, being a regulated platform for security token issuance means our strict and unwavering compliance with FCA rules. The worst we can do is to take an emotional stance towards the regulator and adopt the “where did we go wrong” position. There is no wrong or right in this matter: strict adherence to regulation is a must for any company involved with financial markets and a guarantee for you, our investors, that the business practices on the Platform are transparent and legal.

In the meantime, we are continuing onboarding investors in preparation for the upcoming STO, virtually all existing accounts on the Platform have been verified in time for launch. As soon as the documentation from the FCA comes through, we will confirm an STO launch date. This time around, we are not going to get ahead of ourselves and pinpoint the time, but we are counting in DAYS. Please, follow us on all our social channels, and the good news will come soon enough!

Yours truly,

Arnoldas Nauseda