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A single licence permits an agent to sell both unit trusts and unitlink products and advise investors on the products.

The life insurance agents association had asked the SEC to loosen the criteria for granting the licence to those insurance agents wishing to sell unit link products.

Pravej Ongartsittigul, senior assistant secretarygeneral of the SEC, said last week that the SEC would like to keep its standard for the single licence at the international level while it discusses with its counterparts from Singapore, Malaysia and Indonesia on com¬mon guidelines for crossselling.

Once a consensus is formed, agents with a single licence in Thailand can sell mutual funds from the other three countries to Thai investors, and vice versa.

The agents association would like the SEC to ease the insurance examination criteria set by the Thailand Securities Institute and Association of Investment Management Companies, as agents couldn't pass the test, Pravej said.

However, the SEC couldn't agree, as a single licence holder must have good understanding and knowledge about the financial products they would sell and must be able to educate customers on investment risks, he said.

The SEC has joined hands with universities nationwide to introduce courses and examinations for the single licence in the provinces.

Initially, the cooperation among the four countries will be on simple unit trusts such as money market, index, and equity or fixed income funds.

Some 20,000 people here have received single licences from the SEC, of which 5,000 are staff of securities firms and the rest are members of the general public and bank employees.

"We need to boost the number of single licence holders in order to educate investors, which will help stabilise the capital market," Pravej said.

At present, Bt1.2 trillion of investment is parked in mutual funds, compared to more than Bt300 billion in provident funds, more than Bt300 billion in the Government Pension Fund and more than Bt300 billion in the Social Security Fund.