Increasing the property qualification from 6 million to 24 million rubles. may cause a reduction in the number of potential qualified investors by 7.6 times, should from the analysis of the National Association of Stock Market Participants (NAUFOR).
The association has calculated that another 380,000 bank clients can receive “quala” status – the size of their deposits corresponds to the current Bank of Russia limit. If the qualifications are tightened, the number of potential qualified investors in the country will be reduced to 50,000 people, NAUFOR added.
At the end of the first half of 2023, the number of active qualified investors in Russia was about 617,000 people. The share of “quals” in the total number of investors is 1.8%, while they own 73% of all assets.
On the Moscow Exchange stock market, the share of qualified investors was 60%, the association specified. 72% of “qualifiers” use less than half of the liquid assets required to gain access to all risk instruments in the stock market.
Bank of Russia approved a fourfold increase in the property qualification for qualified investors in July 2023. The regulator decided to increase the criterion in two stages – first to 12 million rubles, then to 24 million rubles.
The Central Bank put forward a proposal to tighten the restrictions back in July 2022. Initially, the regulator proposed increasing the property threshold for assigning the status of a qualified investor to 30 million rubles. in “according to world practice of determining qualifications by property status.”
According to a study of the largest brokers, the majority of “quals” (up to 80%) actively invest in Russian companies. They all prefer to invest in blue chips of the domestic stock market. Experts interviewed by Vedomosti noted that the most popular issuers of shares among Russian qualified investors are Sberbank“Gazprom“, “Yandex“, “Lukoil“, Polymetal“Phosagro” And “Pole”.
