At its 26th Authority meeting, the India International Financial Services Centres Authority approved a set of regulatory changes for GIFT-IFSC, including amendments to the IFSCA (Fund Management) Regulations, 2025 and the IFSCA (Capital Market Intermediaries) (Amendment) Regulations, 2025, as well as a draft revamp of the Global In-House Centres regime. It also agreed targeted changes to the book-keeping and professional services framework and to business registration rules affecting Lloyd’s service companies. For fund management entities, the package relaxes key managerial personnel eligibility by adding a certification-based pathway with reduced work-experience requirements and expanding the types of organisations whose experience counts to include consulting or advisory firms and private or public companies performing similar work. Venture Capital Schemes and Restricted Schemes will be able to seek multiple six-month extensions of a scheme’s Private Placement Memorandum validity (instead of a one-time extension), and a one-time three-month extension window will be provided for certain expired PPMs, including open-ended schemes that began investing after raising USD 1 million but did not reach the USD 3 million minimum corpus within the scheme tenure, alongside new investor-protection provisions for such cases. FMEs that must appoint an IFSC-based custodian will receive a 24-month migration window, subject to conditions. The draft IFSCA (Global In-House Centres) Regulations, 2025 would recognise multiple GIC operating models, permit set-up directly or via third-party service providers (including co-delivery), allow services to group entities in India up to 10% of annual revenue, ease the 20% cap on employee transfers, and set out eligibility, registration, governance, reporting, supervision, and transition provisions. Separately, the Authority approved deleting the BATF Regulations’ minimum office space requirement of 60 sq.ft per employee, expanded eligible qualifications and reduced experience requirements for principal officers and compliance officers of capital market intermediaries, clarified liquid net worth calculations (including certain exchange deposits and margins and excluding liabilities), set a minimum net worth of USD 1 million for custodians with existing custodians given time until June 30, 2026 to comply, and introduced the option of a unified registration for intermediaries with multiple registrations with detailed norms to follow. The definition of a ‘Lloyd’s Service Company’ will be broadened to include service companies promoted by group entities of Managing Agents or Members of Lloyd’s as permitted by Lloyd’s, and IFSCA indicated the relevant notifications will be released in due course.
India International Financial Services Centres Authority 2025-12-23
India International Financial Services Centres Authority approves draft Global In-House Centres framework and relaxes fund manager and market intermediary rules
The India International Financial Services Centres Authority approved regulatory changes for GIFT-IFSC, including amendments to fund management and capital market intermediary regulations, and a draft revamp of the Global In-House Centres regime. Key updates include relaxed eligibility for fund management personnel, extended validity for Venture Capital Schemes' Private Placement Memoranda, and a 24-month migration window for custodians. Additional changes involve removing office space requirements, expanding qualifications for intermediaries, and introducing unified registration options.