On July 20, the Office of the Financial Stability and Development Committee of the State Council announced to the public that in order to carry out the CPC and the State Council’s decision to expand the opening-up policy, based on the principle of “the earlier and faster the better”, after in-depth researches and assessments, the Office released the following 11 measures to open up the financial sector:

1. Allowing foreign institutions to rate all types of bonds on the interbank bond market and the exchange bond market when they carry out credit rating businesses in China;

2. Encouraging foreign financial institutions to participate in establishing and investing in financial management subsidiaries of commercial banks;

3. Allowing foreign asset management institutions and subsidiaries of Chinese banks or insurance companies to establish joint venture financial management companies controlled by the foreign party;

4. Allowing foreign financial institutions to invest and establish or purchase shares in pension management companies;

5. Supporting wholly foreign funded companies to establish or purchase shares in money brokerage companies;

6. Early terminating the transition period for raising the limit of foreign shareholding ratio of personal insurance from 51% to 100% by 2020 instead of the original 2021;

7. Removing the restriction that domestic insurance companies must collectively hold more than 75% of the shares of insurance asset management companies, and allowing foreign investors to hold more than 25% of the shares.

8. Easing the entry conditions for foreign-funded insurance companies and removing the requirement on 30 years of operation;

9. Advancing the deadline for removing restrictions on foreign stock ratio of securities companies, fund management companies and futures companies from 2021 to 2020;

10. Allowing foreign-funded institutions to receive the interbank bond market Type A main underwriting license;

11. Further facilitating foreign institutional investors’ to invest in the interbank bond market.

Source: gov.cn