AUSTRALIA: Asia Region Funds Passport Bill Submissions Sought

Thursday January 4 2018

The Australian Government is seeking submissions on a draft Asia Region Funds Passport (Passport) Bill and related explanatory materials.

The Passport is a common framework of coordinated regulatory oversight to facilitate cross border issuing of managed investment funds. Australia, Japan, Korea, New Zealand and Thailand are signatories to the Passport’s Memorandum of Cooperation (MoC), which took effect on 30 June 2016.

Schedule 1 of the exposure draft is a revised Chapter 8A (previously released for consultation in August 2017) and includes minor revisions and new provisions to:

• address the treatment of notified foreign passport funds
• ban such funds from issuing debentures in Australia, and
• require such funds to provide various reports to members in Australia.

Schedule 2 would amend the Corporations Act 2001 to provide the disclosure, financial reporting, distribution and licensing frameworks for notified foreign passport funds, as well as other amendments.

The new law states that a country is a participating economy and eligible for the special Passport arrangements if it signed and implemented the MOC, and it has not withdrawn from the MOC. Economies will cease to be participating economies if the MOC is terminated.

A participating economy is a country which:

• is a signatory to the MOC;
• has not withdrawn from the MOC; and
• has been listed on the Joint Committee’s website as a country which has successfully implemented the MOC at or before the time in question.

An entity is a passport fund if it is:

• a regulated CIS or a sub-fund of a regulated CIS; and
• registered as a passport fund in a participating economy.

Submissions close on 25^th January 2018.

Please click on the above for more information.