What is a professional investor?
The Administrative Measures set specific and detailed conditions for professional investors. Generally speaking, the threshold requirements for professional investors are quite high, including financial institutions, wealth management products, pension funds and public welfare funds, qualified legal persons or other organizations, and qualified natural persons. The details of each category are as follows.
Standards and special protection for ordinary investors
For the standard of ordinary investors, the management method adopts an exception, and all investors except professional investors are regarded as ordinary investors. It can be said that the range of ordinary investors is very wide, as long as they do not meet the conditions of professional investors, they are all ordinary investors.
Due to the limited professional knowledge and asymmetric information of ordinary investors, both the new Securities Law and the Administrative Measures provide special protection for ordinary investors. For example, the second paragraph of Article 89 of the new Securities Law stipulates that "if there is a dispute between an ordinary investor and a securities company", the securities company shall assume the responsibility of presumption of fault in the burden of proof. In other words, when there is a dispute between an ordinary investor and a securities company, "the securities company shall prove that its behavior complies with laws, administrative regulations and the provisions of the CSRC, and there is no misleading or fraudulent behavior. If a securities company cannot provide evidence, it shall bear the corresponding liability for compensation. " In addition, the provisions of the Administrative Measures on special protection for ordinary investors are more detailed, and it is clear that "ordinary investors enjoy special protection in terms of information disclosure, risk warning and appropriate matching".
Mutual transformation between professional investors and ordinary investors
Of course, the identities of professional investors and ordinary investors are not immutable. According to the provisions of the management measures, "ordinary investors and professional investors can be transformed into each other under certain conditions."
1. professional investors are transformed into ordinary investors. If professional investors want to become ordinary investors, the conditions are very relaxed. Professional investors only need to inform the operating institutions in writing to choose to become ordinary investors. At this time, "the operating institution shall fulfill the corresponding appropriateness obligations." However, according to the provisions of the Administrative Measures, the scope of professional investors who can be converted into ordinary investors is limited, and they are limited to qualified legal persons or other organizations and qualified natural person professional investors.
2. Ordinary investors are transformed into professional investors. In order to become a professional investor, ordinary investors need to meet one of the following two conditions: first, "1 the net assets at the end of the period are not less than 1 00000 yuan, 1 the financial assets at the end of the period are not less than 5 million yuan, and the investment in securities, funds, futures, gold and foreign exchange exceeds1year. Second, "natural person investors whose financial assets are not less than 3 million yuan or whose average annual income in the last three years is not less than 300,000 yuan, and who have more than 1 year investment experience in securities, funds, futures, gold and foreign exchange, or more than 1 year experience in financial product design, investment, risk management and related work". Ordinary investors who meet one of these two conditions can apply to become professional investors. However, even if it meets the requirements, the operating agency has the right to decide whether to approve its transformation. It can be said that the conditions for ordinary investors to become professional investors are still quite strict.
To sum up, it can be seen that the criteria for distinguishing ordinary investors from professional investors, the special protection for ordinary investors and the strict restrictions on the transformation from ordinary investors to professional investors are actually the proper meaning of strengthening the proper management of investors, which is of great significance for strengthening the source protection of ordinary investors.