Foreign financial service companies gave the thumbs up to China's steps to reform and open up its financial market over the past several decades — though there is still room to develop, they said.
The Toronto-based Manulife Financial said in a report seen by China Daily website at the China Development Forum on Saturday that the Chinese government has made important progress toward mitigating future potential risks, as it has adopted measures to strengthen financial regulation and liberalize financial markets over the previous years, including launching a policy campaign to deleverage the financial sector, which focused on reducing risks related to shadow banking activity.
Incremental opening-up of the onshore bond and equity markets has started to increase foreign participation, paving the way for China's inclusion in global indices like the MSCI, as HSBC noted in its report.
At the end of last month, MSCI decided to expand the weight of yuan-denominated A-shares in benchmark indexes by quadrupling the inclusion factor or adjusted free float cap from 5 to 20 percent, after an initial inclusion of China A-shares starting in June 2018. Its rival FTSE Russell will also begin phasing in eligible Chinese-listed stocks starting this June.
Bloomberg bet big on the Chinese bond market, whose foreign ownership was at around 3 percent compared with two-thirds of Australian bonds and about 30 percent of US bonds. It estimated in a report that Chinese bonds held by foreign investors could increase by up to a factor of 16 by 2025.
China's government and policy bank bonds will be added to the Bloomberg Global Aggregate Index over a 20-month period starting in April, which will change China's zero-weight status in major global bond indexes. However issues such as information disclosure and credit rating, as the report mentions, need to be addressed.
Jan Svejnar, director of Columbia University's Center on Global Economic Governance, said on the sidelines of the forum that "China has been careful, cautious about opening up the financial market; that I think is appropriate at early stages of development." Since China's economy is strong and diversified enough now, he said, it's beneficial for it to have a financial sector that's more open.
However, HSBC also noted China's financial industry still has significant room to improve with regards to efficiency, as well as effectiveness in deploying financial resources to serve the real economy.
China should improve the infrastructure of the domestic financial market and promote the development of China's credit derivative market while continuing to expand RMB cross-border investment channels and promote RMB internationalization and capital account convertibility, HSBC said.
The company added further opening-up of the financial services industry does not necessarily jeopardize supervision and risk prevention.