E-Reporting Initiative: Minor Changes in Data Collection Will Provide Significant Positive Benefits
GRAND CAYMAN (Thursday, 24 August 2006)
When the Cayman Islands Monetary Authority's (CIMA) electronic reporting initiative comes on stream in early 2007, for CIMA-regulated funds with a December 2006 year-end, fund managers will submit, in a prescribed manner, their annual reporting requirements using a secure, streamlined and paperless system.
CIMA will then have accurate, electronic data, extracted mostly from audited accounts, for use in reporting aggregate information on the fund industry.
The Authority believes the change in how fund information is filed - not the information itself -- will represent a marked improvement to the submission process.
"The system we are seeking to develop will eliminate redundant data requirements, align reporting to make use of more of the data that regulated entities use for their own purposes, and minimise ad hoc requests from us to those entities, thereby making CIMA more effective in its regulatory oversight," said Mr. Gary Linford, Head of Investment and Securities for the Authority.
He added: "CIMA-regulated funds will not need to file 'information on transactions' as recently reported in an online media, nor is CIMA seeking to increase its prudential regulation of hedge funds beyond the existing regulatory framework. The initiative will allow us to significantly improve our compilation of aggregate statistics on the 8,000 funds regulated in our jurisdiction. This will better enable CIMA to meet the needs of our stakeholders for reliable, representative industry statistics, such as size, growth, change, market share, and investments by and in funds."
Mr. Linford stressed that the information submitted has always been and will continue to be managed in an extremely confidential manner. "In no way will fund- or manager-specific information be made available to the public, only aggregate industry statistics."
Demand for such data from industry and others is high, but as the Authority currently does not have the mechanisms in place to collect the relevant data from manual reports, aggregate statistics on Cayman's fund industry are not available. For example, to report total assets under management by CIMA-regulated funds would currently require manually reviewing each set of audited accounts held in paper form - e-filing will change all of that.
"The industry has been supportive of this move," said Mr. Linford, who added that the Authority undertook a consultation exercise with the private sector to seek input. "Many of the investment managers and service providers with whom we have had dialogue are relieved to hear that meaningful statistics on the industry will soon be available from a credible source."
With the growth rate in CIMA-regulated funds, electronic reporting will also enable the Authority to maintain the appropriate supervisory capacity without a proportionate increase in staff.
Additional details on the objectives and features of the e-filing initiative is available from CIMA.
This brief provides a list of the information to be collected, explains why operators of regulated funds will need to submit the information and confirms the operational benefits of the e-reporting initiative.
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