China Drafts New Rules to Promote Bond Investments by Foreign Investors
May 22, 2019 | BY
Marilyn RomeroThe People's Bank of China and State Administration of Foreign Exchange have issued draft rules that will allow foreign investors to switch bond investments between China's foreign investment channels.
China, in response to demand from the international investment community, has issued draft rules that will allow foreign investors to switch investments between the China interbank bond market scheme, known as CIBM Direct, and the older Qualified Foreign Institutional Investor, or QFII, program.
The country's People's Bank of China, or the PBOC, and State Administration of Foreign Exchange, or SAFE, have issued draft guidelines that will govern how foreign investors will be able to switch bonds between these schemes, something that was not possible in the past.
At present there are three main programs by which foreign investors can access the domestic bond market: CIBM Direct, QFII, and Bond Connect. Introduced in 2002, the QFII Scheme allows specified licensed international investors to participate in mainland China's stock exchanges, particularly the Shanghai and Shenzhen bourses. Before QFII was introduced, investors from other nations were not allowed to buy or sell stocks or bonds on Chinese exchanges.
China's domestic bond market has developed from virtually nothing a few decades ago, into what is now the third largest in the world. By the end of 2017, the market's outstanding volume reached Rmb75 trillion, about $12 trillion, according to a recent BNP Paribas report.
The launch of the CIBM Direct scheme was announced in February 2016, and was a significant step in opening up Chinese bond markets to foreign investment. It is available to a wide range of investors, such as commercial banks, asset managers, insurers, securities houses, pension funds, charitable funds, and other long-term investors approved by China's central bank.
Furthermore, compared to QFII, CIBM Direct is a much simpler and easier-to-access scheme, given its registration-based nature with no quota limits, and a more streamlined application process. It also allows foreign firms to trade bonds directly through banks holding a Type A licence in Mainland China. The scheme has proved attractive to investors and over the past 12 months the number of CIBM Direct licence-holders has grown to around 300.
In addition to QFII and CIBM Direct, China introduced in 2011, the RMB Qualified Foreign Institutional Investor, or RQFII Scheme, allowing the use of renminbi funds held in Hong Kong by offshore subsidiaries of approved investment firms to invest in mainland securities subject to various quotas and rules. Last year, the government established Bond Connect, which further simplified bond trading by allowing foreign investors to access the onshore primary markets as well as secondary markets through trading connections set up between the relevant Mainland and Hong Kong financial infrastructure institutions.
The new rules will allow investors to switch bonds between the CIBM Direct and the QFII schemes, and so provide foreign investors greater flexibility in structuring and managing their portfolios. It will also help China's policy objective of further integrating yuan-denominated bonds into the global financial system. More foreign institutions are likely to be attracted into the Chinese bond market now that they are not only given a choice of channels through which they can invest, but also the option to switch investments between them at a later stage.
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