KUALA LUMPUR (April 6): Bursa Malaysia Bhd’s (KL:BURSA) new reclassification of equities investor trading data to better reflect ownership and origin of funds takes effect on Monday, April 6.

Under the new system, trades through nominee accounts are categorised as either retail or institutional at the trade level. Previously, all nominee trades were counted as institutional investors, including those by retail investors through certain trading platforms.

The recategorisation is based on information about the end beneficiary provided by participating organisations.

Meanwhile, trades conducted for local institutions by Malaysia-incorporated but foreign-owned houses will now be classified as local institutions to give a more accurate picture of domestic investment activity.

Previously, all trades by foreign-owned institutions were classified as foreign.

Bursa Malaysia said the reclassification aims to provide clearer visibility of investor participation and fund flows across retail, institutional and domestic segments. This would improve the granularity of participation and fund flow statistics by refining how trades are classified and attributed.

It also provides distinction between foreign and local retail, but this is provided on a monthly basis.

This is the first time the investor segmentation was updated since it was first introduced in 2008.

The move comes amid growing use of nominee structures, particularly with the rise of digital brokerage platforms, and improvements in reporting that allow more detailed trade-level classification, Bursa Malaysia said.

The bourse stressed that the reclassification affects only the reporting of investor participation data and does not alter total daily trading value or shareholding records.

Bursa Malaysia added that it will continue engaging stakeholders to support understanding of the reclassified data and improve interpretation of market activity.