Fund Product, Company and Regulatory Updates as at 11 April 2017

Product Updates
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BT, Asgard, add bond fund to platforms
BT Wrap and Asgard have both added an active bond fund - the Jamieson Coote Bonds' Active Bond Fund - to their platforms. The bond fund is the retail version of a wholesale Australian government bond strategy. The fund is already available on Macquarie Wrap. 

SSGA growing with new fund
State Street Global Investors (SSGA) Australia is launching a new fixed income fund in the next few months, a domestic floating rate note fund with a monthly income, high credit quality and low fee load of 38 basis points. 

AMP launches long-term global equity fund
AMP Capital has launched a new fund - AMP Capital Global Equity - to focus on absolute risk and return, leaving benchmarks aside. The investments will be in between 25 and 35 companies that have strong current or anticipated cash generation.  

Perennial Value launch new microcap strategy
The Perennial Value Microcap Opportunities Trust is set to invest in up to 70 stocks outside the S&P/ASX 200, with a market cap of under $500 million at the time of purchase. The portfolio will hold about 45 stocks with up to 20 per cent invested in unlisted stocks and no more than 20 per cent invested in cash. 

Company Updates
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Suncorp transitions $7.7bn from Nikko into other managers
Suncorp is transitioning most of the $9 billion it has managed by Nikko Asset Management in Australia into several other managers, including BlackRock, PIMCO, QIC and others. 

Regulatory Updates
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First FoFA breaches - NSG Services
ASIC has won the first Future of Financial Advice-based (FoFA) action against a licensee for breaches of the legislated reforms. NSG Services was found to have breached a number of sections of the Corporations Act. ASIC alleged that the company failed to take reasonable steps to make sure its advisers were complying with the best-interests obligation when providing advice, with a number of occasions indicating non-compliance in regards to insurance and/or rolling over of superannuation. 

Rural & General Insurance AFSL cancelled
Rural & General Insurance Broking Pty Limited (RGIB) has had its Australian financial services (AFS) licence cancelled for failure to lodge annual statements for 2014 and 2015. 

Citibank refunds $5m in credit card transaction fees
Citigroup (Citibank) has refunded over 230,000 customers about $5 million after it did not properly disclose that international credit card transaction fees applied to Australian-dollar transactions where the merchant uses an entity based overseas for transaction processing. This process had been in place since early 2016.