Circular to intermediaries SFC and HKMA joint product survey 2024

As an annual exercise to collect information about the selling activities of intermediaries in Hong Kong, the Securities and Futures Commission (SFC) and the Hong Kong Monetary Authority (HKMA) will launch the 2024 joint survey on the sale of non-exchange-traded investment products by licensed corporations (LCs) and registered institutions (RIs) that are licensed or registered for Type 1 (dealing in securities), Type 4 (advising on securities) or both regulated activities (collectively, Reporting Intermediaries). This survey will enable the SFC and the HKMA to better understand the industry landscape and market trends, supervise intermediaries’ selling practices, and coordinate their responses to address areas of common concern.

Scope

The survey covers the sale of non-exchange-traded investment products (such as collective investment schemes, debt securities, structured products, swaps, swaptions and repos) to investors (In-scope Clients) who are not institutional professional investors¹ or certain corporate professional investors for which intermediaries have been exempted from the suitability obligation² for the period from 1 January to 31 December 2024.

The questionnaire includes three parts:

• Part A - General information
  All Reporting Intermediaries should complete Part A to provide their contact information and indicate whether they sold any reportable non-exchange traded investment products to In-scope Clients during the reporting period.
  
  
• Part B - Information on the sale of non-exchange traded investment products
  Reporting Intermediaries which sold reportable non-exchange traded investment products to In-scope Clients during the reporting period should also complete Part B to provide an overview of their selling activities, such as the transaction amounts by types of investment product, the top issuers of the investment products sold and the types of client.
  
  
• Part C - Supplementary information
  Reporting Intermediaries that are LCs with total transaction amounts of HK$1 billion or above during the reporting period or RIs with total transaction amounts of HK$30 billion or above should also complete Part C, which collects information such as the transaction amounts of investment products by types of investor and details of the top five investment products sold.

Reporting timeline

All Reporting Intermediaries should submit the completed questionnaires to the SFC through WINGS³ on or before the following dates:

The questionnaire in Excel format, guidance notes and completion instructions are now available on WINGS. Please read the notes and instructions before completing the questionnaire.

All information collected from the survey will be treated in strict confidence and will not be disclosed to any other third parties, except as anonymised, aggregated statistics. Results of the 2023 joint product survey are available on the SFC website.

Should you have any queries regarding the content of this circular, please contact Ms Denise Chan at the Intermediaries Supervision Department of the SFC at 2231 1188 or your case officer. For technical assistance with using WINGS, please dial the hotline at 2207 9333 or write to TechEnquiries@wings.sfc.hk.

Intermediaries Supervision Department                     Banking Conduct Department
Intermediaries Division                                                          Hong Kong Monetary Authority
Securities and Futures Commission

End

SFO/IS/039/2024
HKMA/B1/15C