by TMR

The Securities Commission Malaysia (SC), Monetary Authority of Singapore and the Securities and Exchange Commission of Thailand have agreed to allow fund managers in one jurisdiction to offer funds constituted and approved for that jurisdiction to retail investors in the other two jurisdictions under an authorised process.

The move aims to encourage cross-border fundings in Asean and allow fund managers to offer more fund products to the region’s retail investors, a release from SC yesterday noted. The deal lowered the qualifying criteria to US$350 million (RM 1.37 billion) assets under management from the previous US$500 million (RM1.95 billion) for fund managers.

The time-to-market for the fund launches has been shortened to within 21 calendar days for fund authorisation applications. The new framework increased the proportion of the fund’s assets that can be sub-managed by a manager from 20% to 100%. The enhanced framework is  effective Feb 23.