Bangkok--19 Jan--Standard Chartered Ban
Standard Chartered Bank encourages its commercial and institutional clients in Thailand to seize the opening opportunities of direct access to onshore securities market in China through the Renminbi Qualified Foreign Institutional Investor (RQFII) programme as China will remain to be a major economic player and should account for about 25% of global growth in 2020.
China has granted a RMB 50 billion (THB 273,000 billion) investment quota to Thailand to invest in RMB-denominated securities in China under the RQFII programme, Yuthadej Putamanonda, Managing Director and Head of Transaction Banking, Standard Chartered Bank (Thai) said the granting of such investment privilege to Thailand, one among only 16 jurisdictions in the world, signifies the deepening of financial cooperation between Thailand and China.
"Investors should welcome and prepare to seize the benefits of this great opportunity. We can see high potential uses of RQFII in the international investor's investment portfolio. The flexibility of this programme has opened up the potential for interesting and innovative investment products for fund managers to create a new offshore product from onshore China securities. Numerous fast-growing, high returns sectors in China previously not available offshore will now be available for international investors," said Mr. Yuthadej.
With the latest announcement of RQFII quota, a total RMB 1210 billion RQFII has granted to 16 jurisdictions, and as of January 2016 approximately RMB 450 billion has already allocated to a total of 156 licenses. Standard Chartered is the first bank to facilitate an RQFII approval for a Sovereign Wealth Fund and completed the first Luxembourg UCITS RQFII Structure in 2015.
"China's securities and currency markets are globalising at a tremendous pace. We expect considerable long term demand for access to China from global investment managers. Thailand's fund industry has the skills and capabilities to facilitate this access in providing products both locally and through the ASEAN funds passport. This aligns Thailand with other leading asset management centres around the world. The RQFII quota for Thailand is just an example of a
linkage with China around RMB internationalisation that can be further leveraged across other part of the economy and is expected to promote broader financial linkages between Thailand and China.
As the leading international bank, Standard Chartered has the advantage and capability to help investors keen to use RQFII to access China securities markets, especially China Interbank Bond Market, now the third largest bond market in the world. With 158 years of history in China market, Standard Chartered is the only foreign bank that holds all the key licenses to facilitate investor access to the interbank bond market by offering an end-to-end solution for clients. This begins with Standard Chartered Bank working with investors on the application process, connecting our clients with actionable research ideas, facilitating securities execution, safekeeping, settlement and day-to-day quota management," said Mr. Yuthadej.