The Australian government must move faster to relax regulatory and tax settings to attract more capital from overseas investors under the new Corporate Collective Investment Vehicle regime, the Financial Services Council said on Thursday.
FSC CEO Blake Briggs said fund managers need a clearer mechanism delivered by the government to adopt the CCIV.to offer Asian-investor-friendly collective investment schemes structured as companies in a bid to position Australia as an investment hub to rival Singapore or Hong Kong. Mr Briggs called on the government to establish a transition mechanism to move existing trust-structured investment funds to the CCIV structure, with more clarity for fund managers over tax and administrative obligations incurred from the transition.“The vision of Australia as a major exporter of funds management services has not been realised,” he said.
In Australia, only 6.5 per cent of the total of $4.3 trillion in funds under management is managed on behalf of overseas investors, versus 78 per cent in Singapore, and 90 per cent in Ireland a KPMG report commissioned by the FSC said.