Listen to this article
The GIFT International Financial Services Centres Authority (IFSCA) has proposed to reduce the minimum investment amount in portfolio management services (PMS) to USD 75,000 from USD 150,000.
Further, the clients under PMS are also allowed to transfer their funds in a designated broking account, which may be then managed by the fund management entities (FME) under PMS.
The circular also proposes to reduce the minimum corpus for retail and non-retail schemes at the IFSC to USD 3 million from the previous corpus requirement of USD 5 million.
The investment activities for such schemes can start once it achieves the corpus of USD 1 million with the condition of achieving the remaining corpus of USD 3 million within the next 12 months.
Here are some of the key changes proposed by IFSCA:
- The requirement for the close ended retail schemes to be listed on recognized stock exchanges is likely to be done away with if minimum amount of investment by each investor in the scheme is at least USD 10,000
- Sectoral, thematic or index retail scheme can invest up to 15% in a single stock or company
- The criteria of 5 years of experience in managing AUM of USD 200 million and 25,000 investors to be a registered FME (retail) in GIFT IFSC can be relaxed on the grounds of experience
- Without a prior approval from the 75% investors, a non-retail scheme will be restricted from buying or selling securities from associates, other schemes of the FME or its associates, or a major investor (who has committed to invest at least 50% of the corpus of the scheme)
- The pending money that has not been deployed under the retail and non-retail schemes can be invested in bank deposits and overnight schemes.