Hong Kong’s monetary authority is working with market regulators on how to get bank transactions done when stock market opens in bad weather
- There are ‘major concerns’ about how brokers and clients can handle bank transactions when the stock market is trading but all bank branches are closed during typhoons or rainstorms, deputy HKMA CEO Arthur Yuen tells Legislative Council financial affairs panel meeting
- A key issue that needs to be resolved is cheque clearance, Yuen says
In decades-old practice, the Hong Kong stock market and all of the city’s 1,100 bank branches shut down during severe weather. But now the Hong Kong government is urging the local bourse to remain open during typhoons.
It, however, has no plans to order all bank branches to open too.
“There are major concerns about how brokers and their clients can handle bank transactions and cheque clearing issues when the stock market is trading but all bank branches are closed during typhoons or rainstorms,” Arthur Yuen Kwok-hang, the HKMA’s deputy CEO, said during a Legislative Council financial affairs panel meeting on Friday.
“The HKMA is working with the Securities and Futures Commission to seek ways to solve these problems.”
Hong Kong is looking at ways to enhance its appeal as the world’s fourth-largest stock market, and both Chief Executive John Lee Ka-chiu, in his policy address last month, and Financial Secretary Paul Chan Mo-po, in his budget speech in February, have called on the exchange and other regulators to study how the stock market can remain open during inclement weather.