News from this newspaper (Reporter Sun Jie) Recently, the Hong Kong Stock Exchange issued a notice to market participants, requiring all relevant intermediaries to participate in the end of the Hong Kong investor identification code system (ie real-name system) between May 16 and July 15. Peer testing.
This means that the real-name system for Hong Kong stocks is one step closer to its official implementation.
The Hong Kong Stock Exchange said that a market exercise of the system related to the Hong Kong investor identification number system will be held in the third quarter of this year, so that the relevant regulated intermediaries can confirm that they are ready before the system is implemented.
Earlier, the Hong Kong Securities Regulatory Commission said that the investor identification code system will be officially implemented in the second half of this year.
In recent years, mainland investors have participated in Hong Kong stock investment in the form of "one person, multiple households", which is a factor that triggered this system adjustment.
Before the introduction of the investor identification code system, the trading system used by the HKEx only obtained the information of the Exchange Participant who entered the securities trading order, not the information of the customer who actually made the trading order.
When suspicious trading activities occur, the SFC may have to issue two or more notices to the relevant exchange participants or other intermediaries in order to identify the relevant customers, which undermines the efficiency of supervision, and the intermediaries also face higher compliance costs.
In addition to the "one person, multiple households" problem, the lack of an effective investor identification mechanism makes the Hong Kong Securities Regulatory Commission face greater workload and longer investigation time when identifying market misconduct such as market manipulation and insider trading.
In addition, although the Hong Kong stock listing rules expressly prohibit the same person from repeatedly subscribed for new shares, and require issuers, sponsors and underwriters to take reasonable steps to ensure that duplicate or suspected duplicate applications can be identified and rejected, in practice, Since the mainland ID card number exceeds 9 digits, there can be various combinations of ID numbers reported by securities companies.
According to the requirements of the investor identification code system, when submitting or arranging to submit a trading order (automatic order matching order) to the trading system of HKEX for execution, or when an Exchange Participant reports OTC to HKEX as required When trading, the relevant customer's identification code must be provided in the relevant transaction order or transaction report.
Under the new system, the relevant regulated intermediaries must assign unique brokerage client codes to existing clients participating in on- and off-exchange trading of securities listed on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange on a case-by-case basis.
Each brokerage client code should be paired with that particular client's client identification information, including the client's name, the country or jurisdiction in which the identification document was issued, the type of identification document, and the identification document number.
The SFC stated that on the one hand, the investor identification code system can facilitate regulators to monitor the market in a more timely and effective manner, and on the other hand, it can also reduce the ongoing compliance costs brought about by the SFC's inquiries on customer identities.