On October 7, the Canadian Securities Administrators (CSA), released Notice of Amendment implementing eight initiatives to reduce regulatory burden for investment funds.
Highlights of the changes include:
Repeal of the requirement for a mutual fund in continuous distribution to file an AIF and a simplified prospectus. Investment disclosures will be limited to the annual filing of a single streamlined document (the simplified prospectus).
Requirement for investment funds to designate a qualifying website on which regulatory disclosure will be posted.
Introduction of a notice-and-access system for the solicitation of proxies for investment funds to enable the delivery of proxy-related materials by sending a notice providing registered holders or beneficial owners with summary information about the proxy-related materials and instructions on how to access them. Investment funds are no longer required to apply for exemptive relief to use the notice-and-access system.
Removal of the Personal Information Form (PIF) requirements for specified individuals, i.e., individual registrants and permitted individuals who have already submitted a Form 33-109F4 ‘Registration of Individuals and Review of Permitted Individual’. This will reduce the frequency of reporting/filing by investment funds.
Providing relief from certain conflict of interest rules including fund-on-fund investments by investment funds that are not reporting issuers.
Broaden pre-approval criteria for investment fund merger.
Repeal regulatory approval requirements for a (i) change of manager, a (ii) change of control of a manager, and a (iii) change of custodian that occurs in connection with a change of manager.
Providing relief from the requirement to deliver fund facts documents and ETF facts documents for managed accounts and permitted clients, portfolio rebalancing services and automatic switch programs.
Most of the amendments will come into force on January 5, 2022, and the remainder on January 6, 2022.
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