Harbour Asset Management was granted a Managed Investment Scheme (MIS) licence last week, the first mainstream fund manager to receive the new regulatory stamp of compliance.
Under the Financial Markets Conduct Act (FMC) all fund managers – except those running restricted investment schemes – are required to be licensed by the Financial Markets Authority (FMA).
The FMA began MIS licensing in December 2014 but fund managers, and many other market participants, must comply with the new regime by December 2016.
Jody Kaye, Harbour chief operating officer, said the firm was keen to be an “early adopter” of the MIS licensing regime.
“We believe that this MIS license will provide our investors with further confidence that their money is being managed to best practice standards,” Kaye said in a statement.
While the Wellington-based Harbour was the first of its peers to comply, start-up private equity investment firm New Ground Capital earned its MIS licence in December.
Kaye said the next compliance step for Harbour would be to prepare documentation for the government online register of financial products, Disclose.