Due to the regulatory requirements of the European Union, certain products offered by DBS will not be available to retail investors who are residents (regardless of nationality) in the European Economic Area (EEA)1 and United Kingdom (UK). If you are resident in the EEA or UK, please read this section carefully before proceeding with any transaction.
The regulation on key information documents (KIDs) for Packaged Retail and Insurance-based Investment Products (PRIIPs)2 (Regulation (EU) No. 1286/2014, commonly referred to as the PRIIPs Regulation) came into effect on 1 January 2018. Due to the PRIIPs Regulation, DBS is currently unable to offer structured notes and other products falling within the scope of the PRIIPs Regulation to retail investors resident in the EEA or UK.
A retail investor is defined as a client who does not meet the criteria to qualify as a professional client. Such criteria are set out in Annex II of Directive 2014/65/EU (commonly referred to as MiFID II)3. Please note that this is different from the “professional investor” and “accredited investor” criteria applicable in Hong Kong and Singapore respectively. For clients whose beneficial owners are resident in the EEA or UK, by default, we have classified them as retail investors.
The PRIIPs Regulation obliges DBS, when advising on or selling a PRIIP to a retail investor resident in the EEA or UK, to provide such investor with a pre-contractual product disclosure document in the form of a KID, unless the investor is a professional client. KIDs will not be available for any of the structured notes or products (regardless of issuer) on our product platform unless our product manufacturer informs us otherwise. As such, until further notice, DBS will not be able to avail PRIIPs to retail clients resident in the EEA or UK, unless the investor is a professional client.
For EEA or UK clients who had before the relevant effective date acquired PRIIPs through us, they may continue to hold and/or sell these products in or through their DBS accounts. For more information on the PRIIPs Regulation, please contact your Relationship Manager.
DBS Bank (Hong Kong) Limited星展銀行（香港）有限公司12 June 2023
[1] EEA countries (as of November 2022): Austria, Belgium, Bulgaria, Croatia, Republic of Cyprus, Czech Republic, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, *Gibraltar, Greece, Hungary, Iceland, Ireland, Italy, Latvia, Liechtenstein, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Malta, Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Slovakia, Slovenia, Spain and Sweden. The UK is no longer an EEA country as of 31 January 2020 but the UK has onshored the PRIIPs Regulation under its domestic regulations, so principles of PRIIPs Regulation continue to apply after Brexit (until further update). For more details on application of PRIIPs Regulation in the UK, see https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/draft-packaged-retail-and-insurance-based-investment-products-amendment-eu-exit-regulations-2019/packaged-retail-and-insurance-based-investment-products-amendment-eu-exit-regulations-2019-explanatory-information.
*Gibraltar is not an EEA country but implements EEA/ PRIIPs regulation due to some form of special status.
[2]A PRIIP is any investment where the amount repayable to the investor is subject to fluctuations because of exposure to reference values or to the performance of one or more assets which are not directly purchased by the investor. PRIIPs will include investment products such as investment funds, life insurance policies with an investment element, structured products and structured deposits. With effect from 1 January 2023, UCITS (i.e. Undertakings for Collective Investment in Transferable Securities) unit trusts and UCITS exchange-traded funds have been classified as PRIIPs, after the exemption from providing a KID under the PRIIPs Regulation for UCITS ended on 31 December 2022 for EEA countries. The UCITS exemption for the UK will end on 31 December 2026: https://www.gov.uk/government/news/announcement-hm-treasury-to-extend-priips-exemption-for-ucits-funds-for-five-years
[3] http://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/?uri=CELEX:32014L0065
