Year of change for custody

The custody industry should expect a year of change from a regulatory, tax, and operation perspective, the Australian Custodial Services Association (ACSA) believes.

ACSA said it would focus on ensuring industry custody changes are cost effective and improve the funds management and superannuation sector this year.

ACSA chair, David Knights, said: "We continue to be focused on working proactively with regulators and industry stakeholders to implement changes to improve the efficiency and competitiveness of the industry".

The association said it would focus on the implementation of collective investment vehicles (CIVs) and corporate CIV (CCIV) to help improve the global competitiveness of the funds management sector.

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"On the tax front, the industry is collaborating on the managed investment trust (MIT) reforms, intended to reduce complexity, increase certainty and minimise compliance costs for MITs and their investors," ACSA said.

"Among others, there will be increased focus on withholding tax (WHT) for newly proposed investment structures and tax on financial arrangements (TOFA)."

On the operations side, the proposed replacement for the clearing house electronic subregister system (CHESS), improvements in the standardisation of processing of discount securities and improvements to proxy voting automation were on the agenda for ACSA.

"The year 2017 is shaping up to be another year of change and ACSA is well positioned to help the industry meet these new challenges," Knights said.