The Overseas Funds Regime (OFR) gives EEA UCITS a longer-term route to UK retail investors, replacing the temporary permission they’ve relied on since the end of the Brexit transition period. The FCA opened the Overseas Funds Regime to new applications on 30 September 2024 and the first landing slot for funds already in the temporary regime opens today. If you market an EEA UCITS in the UK, your fund now has a date by which it has to move, and missing it is expected to cost you UK retail access.
What is the Overseas Funds Regime?
The Overseas Funds Regime is the UK’s equivalence-based route for overseas funds to be recognised for sale to UK retail investors, and it was created by the Financial Services Act 2021. Instead of the FCA assessing every overseas fund one by one, the Treasury can find a country’s fund regime equivalent, and funds from that country can then apply for recognition through a simpler process.
The first decision was announced on 30 January 2024, when every EEA state was found equivalent for UCITS, and it was made law by SI 2024/635, which has been in force since 16 July 2024. There’s one important carve-out, because UCITS authorised as money market funds (MMFs) are excluded while the UK works out how it wants to treat overseas MMFs.
The FCA’s operating rules followed in PS24/7, which was published on 17 July 2024 and has been in force since 31 July 2024.
How do the OFR landing slots work?
The Temporary Marketing Permissions Regime (TMPR) has kept pre-Brexit EEA UCITS marketable to UK retail investors since the end of 2020. Because there are a lot of funds in it, the FCA is moving them across in a fixed order rather than all at once.
New funds can apply now, so a fund that was never in the TMPR can apply at any time from 30 September 2024 without waiting for a slot.
Stand-alone TMPR funds go first, in landing slot 1, which runs from 1 October to 31 December 2024 and is the slot in which every stand-alone scheme in the TMPR has to apply.
Umbrellas follow alphabetically from 1 November 2024, when umbrella operators start to be given three-month slots according to the first letter of the operator’s name. Operators starting with A apply between 1 November 2024 and 31 January 2025, a new slot opens roughly every month after that, and the last slot (W to Z, plus names starting with a digit) runs from 1 July to 30 September 2026.
The process has some practical points worth planning around:
- Advance notice: the FCA says it will send each operator a binding direction about eight weeks before its slot opens, by email to the chief compliance officer it holds on file. It’s worth making sure those contact details, and the list of funds the FCA has for you on its Register, are correct.
- Frozen data: fund population data is pulled into the application form automatically and can’t be edited, so the FCA asks operators not to change it during their slot. New sub-funds can only be added to the TMPR up to two weeks before an umbrella’s slot opens, and a change of management company can’t be processed between the direction and the decision.
- Decision timing: the FCA decides within two months of a complete application, and supporting documents include the prospectus, the instrument constituting the fund, the latest annual and half-yearly reports, the key investor information document (KIID) and a portfolio statement.
What happens if you miss your slot?
The FCA is clear on this point. Once the Government’s planned legislation takes effect, a fund whose operator neither applies nor tells the FCA it won’t apply during its slot loses its TMPR recognition straight after the slot ends. It then can’t be promoted to UK retail investors until it’s recognised under the OFR, and the FCA warns that losing recognised status may also have tax consequences for UK investors.
That legislation hasn’t been laid yet, and the same is true of the TMPR’s end date. The TMPR is currently due to end in 2025, and the joint Treasury and FCA roadmap says the Government intends to extend it to the end of 2026, subject to legislation, which is the extension the slot table above already assumes.
What does recognition ask of you?
Recognition is an ongoing commitment rather than a one-off filing. Under PS24/7, operators have to tell UK investors whether the Financial Ombudsman Service and the Financial Services Compensation Scheme apply, warn them clearly where they don’t, and explain any redress available in the fund’s home state. They also have to provide UK facilities, such as access to English versions of the prospectus, reports and key investor information, prices, and a way to complain, and material changes to the fund have to be notified to the FCA.
Two further pieces are on the way for OFR funds. The roadmap expects them to move to the UK’s new retail disclosure regime for consumer composite investments from 1 January 2027 at the latest. The Government also intends to consult on whether the UK’s sustainability labelling regime should extend to OFR funds, and the roadmap says that consultation is likely to run from Q3 2024.
The timeline
- 30 January 2024: the Government announces EEA UCITS equivalence, excluding MMFs
- 16 July 2024: SI 2024/635 comes into force
- 31 July 2024: the FCA rules from PS24/7 come into force
- 30 September 2024: the OFR opens to new schemes
- 1 October to 31 December 2024: landing slot 1, for stand-alone TMPR schemes
- 1 November 2024: umbrella slots begin with operators starting with A
- 1 July to 30 September 2026: the final landing slot, for W to Z and digits
- End of 2026: the intended end of the TMPR for non-MMF funds, subject to legislation
- 1 January 2027 at the latest: the expected move to the UK’s new retail disclosure regime
What to do now
- Find your slot by working out which one your operator falls into, and make sure everyone who touches UK distribution knows the date.
- Clean your Register data, checking the chief compliance officer contact and the fund list the FCA holds, because they drive both the direction and the application form.
- Get the UK pack ready by preparing the redress disclosures, facilities arrangements and current regulatory documents before the slot opens rather than during it.
The OFR involves less work than the old fund-by-fund route, but its deadlines are firm. Each slot lasts three months, and the plan is that a fund which misses its slot loses its TMPR recognition once the slot closes, which is why preparation is best finished before the slot opens.
At Kurtosys we help investment managers keep fund data governed in one place, so the details a regulator asks for, from fund lists to share class data, match what goes into prospectuses, KIIDs, factsheets and fund websites. When a market access change lands, that consistency is what keeps an application and its documents aligned. If you’d like to talk through what the OFR means for your UK documents, get in touch.
Sources: FCA: Overseas Funds Regime, update for firms, HM Treasury and FCA: A roadmap to implementing the Overseas Funds Regime (May 2024), FCA PS24/7: Implementing the Overseas Funds Regime, SI 2024/635, Hansard: Overseas Funds Regime, EEA equivalence assessment (30 January 2024), as at 1 October 2024.
About this article
This article reflects the position at 1 October 2024 and was checked against the primary sources available at that time. Thomas Bjerkén, our regulatory reporting and fund data specialist, joined Kurtosys after it was published and now looks after our regulatory content. Some details may have changed since it was published.
