Maybank to transfer trust accounts to new unit

The Maybank ATR group is set to spin off around P80 billion worth of trust accounts into a new trust corporation under the new framework mapped out by the Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas.

These trust accounts—which will include Maybank’s unit investment trust funds and investment management accounts—will be folded into a new TC called Atram Trust Corp. which will be a subsidiary of ATR Asset Management (Atram).

Maybank will remain the single biggest shareholder in Atram Trust but it will not be the majority owner, which is why the new unit will not carry the foreign bank’s name.  The trust firm  will have a diverse shareholder base that includes the ATR Group, the management team and some institutional investors.

Michael Ferrer, managing director of Atram, said the group had already applied to create the TC and was one of the first in the asset management industry to do so.  He said the group was in the final stages as the entity had already been formed but it would still need authority to operate.

Atram Trust will be led by Deanno Basas, concurrently managing director and trust officer for fixed income and multi-asset group at Atram.

“We hope we can start operating before the end of this year,” Ferrer said.

TCs are entities authorized by the BSP to engage in funds management under either a trustor-trustee arrangement or an agency type of agreement. Unlike existing trust units of banks and non-bank financial institutions, TCs are organized as a corporation with its own capital and management structure.  They are not subjected to the credit-related controls applicable to bank operations such as the single borrowers’ limit (SBL) and loan accommodations to directors, officers, stockholders and their related interests (Dosri).

To date, Ferrer said the group would still have some more documents to submit to the BSP.