Authorised investment funds (AUTs and OEICs)

What are authorised investment funds (AIFs)?

The term ‘authorised investment fund’ (often abbreviated to ‘AIF’) is tax terminology for two types of fund: the authorised unit trust (AUT) and the open-ended investment company (OEIC).

AUTs and OEICs are varieties of collective investment scheme that are authorised and regulated by the Financial Conduct Authority. The term ‘AIF’, used to describe them both, is found in the Authorised Investment Funds (Tax) Regulations 2006, SI 2006/964 which contain the main body of rules for the taxation of these types of funds. In this subtopic, those tax regulations are referred to as the ‘AIF Tax Regulations’.

Note that the abbreviation ‘AIF’ used in a tax context (ie to stand for ‘authorised investment fund’) should not be confused with that same abbreviation as used in a regulatory (non-tax) context. In the regulatory (non-tax) context, ‘AIF’ stands for the different concept of the ‘alternative investment fund’.

The legal and regulatory framework

Regulatory forms

From a regulatory perspective, an AIF could be one of four different types of collective investment scheme:

•
undertakings for collective investments in transferable securities (UCITS)
•
non-UCITS

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