The IMA received requests from 180 funds to be admitted in the first phase. Of these, 71 have been admitted, 89 are pending until the funds make available required data.
Other funds were not eligible for inclusion in the IMA sectors; only funds which meet the specified criteria and have submitted all the required information may be included.
IMA will shortly call for submissions to the second phase of entry for offshore funds. A third phase is anticipated in the last quarter of 2010.
The offshore funds will be fully integrated into the existing sector classification system, allowing comparisons between funds to be made on a like-for-like basis. However, the IMA will flag which funds are offshore so that investors and IFAs may search for this data.
There are certain requirement for offshore funds to be included in the IMA sectors, the provider must chose a fund and a share class, that it would like to be in the IMA sector tables.
The chosen share class must have distributor status or, once the new reporting fund rules are introduced, take reporting fund status.
It must be a UCITS, registered for sale in the UK and be appropriate for UK domiciled retail clients, for example by offering a sterling share class (if there is one).
Otherwise a share class that is hedged back into sterling, or, if there is neither of these available, another currency that is appropriate to the assets of the fund. The currency of the chosen share class must be clear to the investor.
Jane Lowe, director of markets at the IMA, said: "The UCITS passport is intended to make cross-border funds available to investors in all European countries. The inclusion of offshore funds into IMA sectors is a natural evolution for our classification system and takes account of the intended flexibility for distributing European funds."
