Currently with Office 2010 I have enabled the built-in scheduled task which updates the templates, and I have the registry entry deployed via group policy which defines the Office 2010 Admin Template Location, however this process does not appear to work with Office 2013.

Has the import process changed? I believe the templates are now stored in the %LocalAppData%\Microsoft\MSIPC\Templates folder, but after the initial "Connect to rights management server and retrieve templates" option is selected under File->Info->Protect Document I don't have any updated templates cached on my PC(s). I have cleared the DRM registry entries and the cached folder location out completely in an attempt to refresh everything for diagnosis, but the templates never seem to update. I have also created new templates on my ADRMS server to verify whether my client PC(s) have updated.

I'm running Server 2012 as a client with Office 2013 64-bit, Windows 8 64-bit as a client OS with Office 2013 64-bit, and Windows 7 64-bit as a client OS with Office 2013 64-bit. At the moment all three of these machines either have old policy templates that have not updated, or cached templates that have been removed from the ADRMS server.

Any suggestions?

I have this problem too and was about to raise the same question here. Thanks for asking the question first.  :)

I noticed Office 2013 changed the whole process of AD RMS. I ever asked a RMS decommission question for Office 2013 a while ago. http://social.technet.microsoft.com/Forums/en-US/rms/thread/23541f09-dcd2-4e8a-8fb6-f8d7fec0390c.

Now I am in the process to move my RMS to AD RMS on Windows 2012 too. The RMS templates is the big problem for us when using Office 2013, regardless you are running Windows 7 or Windows 8 or upgrade the AD RMS client to 2.1. The temporary solution for us is to write a script to push the template files to  %LocalAppData%\Microsoft\MSIPC\UnManagedTemplates folder. That will work for Office 2013. 

However Microsoft needs to fix the template automation issue for Office 2013. In Office 2010, we can also use Office 2010 Group Policy to define the template location via UNC path. That policy no longer exists in Office 2013 Group Policy any more. Anyway, we need one of ways to deploy the templates in an automation fashion. Otherwise, why do we need the %LocalAppData%\Microsoft\MSIPC\Templates for Office 2013? I wonder how Microsoft Office and AD teams could miss this feature.

Anyone know more about this? Thanks.

The temporary solution for us is to write a script to push the template files to  %LocalAppData%\Microsoft\MSIPC\UnManagedTemplates folder. That will work for Office 2013. 

I'll implement this as a temporary work around for the time being, but there has to be a better solution.

Microsoft finally has something to say from there: http://blogs.technet.com/b/rms/archive/2013/06/06/office-2013-ad-rms-client-2-x-and-template-distribution.aspx. Forget about the built-in schedules on Windows 7/Windows 8, and forget about GPO policy for the template distribution that works for prior to Office 2013. let AD RMS 2.x do the template distribution. that is pretty much Microsoft implies here. Hope this saves a lot of time for people who are scratching their heads to try to figure out the template distribution for Office 2013.