The Securities and Futures Commission (SFC) has revised its circular on FASTrack, a faster approval route for simple overseas funds.

The circular sets a target of 15 business days to approve eligible funds. By comparison, standard applications took less than 1.5 months on average over the past five years.

The scheme covers funds based and regulated in markets that have mutual recognition of funds (MRF) arrangements with the SFC.

According to the regulator, these markets give investors similar protection.

“FASTrack Funds are intended to cover simple funds which are already subject to home regulators’ supervision,”

the SFC said.

Equity, bond and mixed funds are eligible. Exchange-traded funds and unlisted index funds may qualify if they track either a plain vanilla index or an index that an SFC-authorised fund already uses.

Feeder funds are eligible when their master fund meets the criteria. Qualifying funds cannot be complex products. They are also not expected to have novel features or raise wider policy issues.

Each fund manager needs a good record with regulators. The manager must be based in an MRF market or in a market whose inspection regime the SFC accepts.

If the fund has an investment delegate, the delegate must be based in one of these markets, belong to the manager’s group, or already run SFC-authorised funds.

Once it receives an application, the SFC will decide within five business days whether to take it up.

Successful cases are then approved within a further ten business days. The timeline applies only to complete, well-prepared filings.

After approval, the SFC will check that funds meet their conditions. Funds that do not qualify follow the standard or non-standard process.

The SFC launched FASTrack as a six-month pilot in November 2024 and formally adopted it in May 2025.

Featured image: Edited by Fintech News Hong Kong, based on image by Vito Goričan via pexels.