Hong Kong’s Securities and Futures Commission (SFC) will expedite the processing of applications from simple investment funds by launching the Fund Authorisation Simple Track (FASTrack) on 4 November 2024.

Under FASTrack, the SFC aims to grant fund authorisations within 15 business days after receiving complete and quality submissions from applicants. The new approach will cover simple funds from jurisdictions which have mutual recognition of funds (MRF) arrangements with the SFC.

As the regulatory regimes of MRF jurisdictions provide comparable investor protection to that of Hong Kong and the SFC has entered into cooperation arrangements with their home regulators, the SFC considers it appropriate to streamline the authorisation process of eligible funds. These include equity, bond and mixed funds, among others.

The SFC will monitor the operation of FASTrack during a six-month pilot period ending 4 May 2025 and refine it as appropriate before formal adoption.

Under FASTrack, the typical processing timeline will consist of “5+10” business days: the SFC will take up an application of a new simple fund from an MRF jurisdiction meeting the relevant criteria within five business days after receiving it, followed by granting authorisation within 10 business days from the take-up date.

The SFC currently processes new fund applications under a two-stream approach for standard and non-standard applications.

In the past five years (2019 – 2023), the average processing time for standard and non-standard applications was less than 1.5 months and 2.5 months respectively. These fall within the SFC’s target processing time which is on average one to two months for standard applications and within two to three months for non-standard applications.