Alternative fund management company, Managing Partners, unveiled its new offering designed to help Swiss and foreign managers distribute funds in Switzerland. The service aims to lower the costs and enhance the flexibility of Swiss-based fund managers to ensure they do not breach compliance rules.
The new regulations, which were introduced on 1 March under the Collective Investment Scheme Act and Collective Investment Scheme Ordinance, impose new organisational requirements and extra compliance costs for managers in Switzerland.
In particular, they require asset management companies in Switzerland to become directly authorised by FINMA if they manage more than CHF100 million (£69m, $105m, €96m) in open-ended funds or more than CHF500 million in closed-ended funds.
According to Managing Partners, asset managers are already breaching these new rules.
“Scale of disruption”
“FINMA has effectively been bounced into this because it needed to radically change the Swiss regulatory environment to bring it into line with new regulations introduced in the European Union,” said chief executive, Jeremy Leach.
“I envisage that the scale of disruption being caused will be similar to that created in the UK in 1988 as a result of the United Kingdom Financial Services Act.”
Further regulation, under the Financial Institutions Act and the Financial Services Act, are also expected to come into force in 2017-18 and are expected to affect the staffing and capital requirements for asset managers.
Leach said Managing Partners and other local firms will offer “low cost and generous grandfathering provisions” when the new laws come in.
