If you are accused of breaking the law under section 241 of the Financial Markets Conduct Act 2013, you have a defence if you traded financial products under a fixed trading plan or using options with a fixed exercise price. You must have entered into the trading plan or acquired the options before you got any inside information and without trying to evade section 241. This means you must have made your trading plan or bought your options before you knew any secret information and not tried to get around the law.

A fixed trading plan is a plan that is set for a certain amount of time and you cannot change it or stop it during that time. The plan must also not be influenced by you once it has started, meaning you cannot tell the person managing the plan what to do with your investments after the plan has begun. There is an exception for employee share purchase schemes, which can be stopped earlier if you leave your job.

You can use this defence if your trading plan or options meet these conditions and you can show that you did not try to break the law under section 241 of the Financial Markets Conduct Act 2013, which you can read more about by following the link to section 241.