The ASEAN Capital Markets Forum has announced that the ASEAN Collective Investment Scheme Framework for the cross-border offering of collective investment schemes is now operational in its 'member jurisdictions' of Malaysia, Singapore and Thailand. They signed the underlying MoU in October last year.

This set of rules allows fund managers operating in one member jurisdiction to offer collective investment schemes constituted and authorised in that jurisdiction to retail investors in other member jurisdictions through a streamlined authorisation process. Qualified fund managers now have a direct and efficient channel for the cross-border distribution of funds in these three markets.

The Singaporean signatory looked forward to the participation of more jurisdictions from the Association of South-East Asian Nations (est'd 1967) in the alliance over the coming years. The Malaysian signatory said that ASEAN had one of the highest savings rates in the world and thought that this initiative could help it re-invest its money in the region.

The member-jurisdictions have also published the “Handbook for CIS Operators of ASEAN CISs” which provides guidance to fund managers about various administrative and procedural matters including the application procedures, the use of local distributors in the offering process and the procedures that govern the remittance of funds. The handbook is available for download at http://www.theacmf.org/ACMF/upload/asean_cis_handbook.pdf.