Brief in Chinese:

马来西亚证监会计划修改单位信托的有关法案，以期提供投资者更灵活的投资选择。

证监会主席Tan Sri Zarinah Anwar介绍，其中一条法案包括以多种货币形态提供产品，这将有利于单位信托基金面向海外销售，同时便于国外投资者规避汇率变动的风险。

Zarinah称法规的修改将为分层结构式单位信托提供便利。一个单位信托基金内部可划分多个层级，每个层级在费用及货币计值方面具有各自的特色。

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The Securities Commission (SC) plans to amend the guidelines on unit trust funds to allow greater flexibility in terms of offering investors choices.

Its chairman, Tan Sri Zarinah Anwar, said one of the amendments would involve offerings in multiple currencies.

"This will encourage unit trust funds to be distributed overseas and facilitate investment by foreign investors who may find it difficult to cope with vagaries of the exchange rate," she said while officiating the launch of The Edge-Lipper-Starmine Awards 2010 here Tuesday.

Zarinah said the amendments would facilitate a multi-class structure for unit trust funds.

"With the amendments, a single unit trust fund will be able to offer multiple classes of units over a single investment pool, with each class of units having different features such as the fees and charges imposed and the currency in which it is denominated.

"For example, investors will be able to choose whether they prefer paying an upfront fee with lower annual fees or higher annual fees in lieu of an upfront fee," she said.

Zarinah said this would enable better matching of the investment preferences for different investor groups.

"The currency options will facilitate the marketing of our unit trusts to foreign investors who can also invest directly into a unit trust fund in their own currency instead of having to convert their investment sum into ringgit.

"The same goes for local investors who want foreign exposure," she said.

Zarinah said the unit trust industry has done extremely well and there was a need to be innovative.

"In Malaysia, unit trusts have been the vanguard of collective investment schemes (CIS), although other forms of CIS such real estate investment trusts and exchange-traded funds have emerged over the last few years.

"In December 1993, we had 43 funds with a total net asset value (NAV) of RM28.1 billion. As at end-2009, the industry had grown to 541 funds with a total NAV of RM191.7 billion," she said.

She said the fees charged to investors needed to be reasonable and commensurate with the value that investors receive.

"Investors frequently ask whether they need to be paying such fees.

In this regard high front end fees need to be rethought and recalibrated to justify the value add, while maintaining a competitive edge," she said.

As a regulator, she said, SC's philosophy was to leave the pricing of services to market forces.

"However, when there is a disconnect between the value of services offered and the price of those services, there would be a need to provide the investor with protection," she said.

She said the industry must also continue to work towards expanding the range of products and markets.

"Malaysia has a competitive advantage as an Islamic capital market hub and today has 144 syariah-compliant unit trust funds," she said.

Zarinah said the standard of disclosure remained one that the industry needed to visit urgently.

"Disclosures happen at two critical points - through the offering document and at the point of sale.

"It is our intention to migrate towards a full post-vetting regime for offering documents to further promote efficiency and competitiveness," she said.

She said the SC, however, continued to see lapses in the standard of disclosure in such documents, resulting in pre-approval reviews that were longer than should be needed.

Zarinah said in transitioning to a full-fledged post vetting regime, a tiered system for approving applications to establish funds would be implemented.

"Unit trust management companies (UTMCs) will be tiered based on the quality of their applications (which include disclosures in their offer documents) with those at the upper most tier being subject to post-vetting (and hence faster approvals) and those at the lower tiers being subject to different degrees of pre-approval review," she said.

The tiering system, she said, would reward UTMCs who had been consistently responsible and diligent in the offering process.

Meanwhile, Public Mutual Bhd has won the "Best Overall Group" award at The Edge-Lipper Malaysia Fund Awards.