Investec Asset Management intends to take advantage of tax changes arising out of the Henry review, with plans to make more retail mutual funds available to dealer groups and independent financial advisers (IFAs) in the Australian market.
“What’s quite exciting for us in the retail space at the moment is that we’re about to see some tax changes as a result of the Henry review,” Investec Asset Management managing director Mark Samuelson said.
“Now extensively what that means is you do away with some of these fifth rules that prevent fee-to-fund structures from being tax effective for a local retail player.
“Because for us right now if we had to set up just a whole range of these things we’d have to seed them, and we’d have to create local funds to avoid things like bed and breakfasting at the end of the period.”
At the moment, Samuelson said there was a disadvantage between an international fund and a local fund in terms of fee-to-fund structure.
“You have to pay tax on your capital gains through that particular structuring whereas the local guys are really only paying tax on their income,” he said.
“That is going to change and now for us that’s a very attractive change that’s about to occur and, as a result, we would look to make a whole bunch more retail mutual funds available to the retail investors, to the dealer groups and through the IFAs.”
