The Canadian Investment Funds Standards Committee is making a few changes to its fund categories, the CIFSC said Wednesday.

The definition of the international equity fund category will be revised to require funds to invest at least 90% of their equity assets outside Canada and the United States, down from the current requirement of 95%.

The CIFSC will also be introducing a new category: synthetic Canadian money market funds. This category will include funds that seek money-market-like returns by investing in a basket of equity securities, and then entering into derivatives contracts to replicate the returns of a specific Canadian money market fund, or a portfolio of that would satisfy the money market fund definition.

In addition, the CIFSC is creating sub-categories within the Miscellaneous category. There has been no change to the Miscellaneous category overall, but the CIFSC says that it has decided to create sub-categories “to help investors and advisors identify the broad strategies used by funds categorized in this space.”

The new sub-categories will be: income & real property; leveraged; commodity; geographic equity; sector equity; other; and undisclosed holdings.

The CIFSC says that data providers will implement these changes at the earliest, with the release of July month-end data.

IE