Asia Securities Industry & Financial Markets Association (ASIFMA) launches Hong Kong Common Practices for Client Onboarding and Refresh

ASIFMA has published a paper documenting common Know Your Customer practices across 15 financial institutions in Hong Kong. ASIFMA aims to demonstrate that adoption of streamlined and consistent KYC measures by different financial institutions can improve monitoring measures for banks and also reduce banks’ friction with clients during the on-boarding process. These are common practices where there are no Anti-Money Laundering (AML) red flags associated with the client, the client is a low risk domestic client and corporate clients are owned by only a single layer of legal entities, which are in turn owned by natural persons.

The paper covers KYC practices for taking on the following types of clients:

1. Privately owned entities and relevant associated individuals
2. Funds regulated by an approved regulator and relevant individuals associated with them
3. Trusts and relevant associated individuals
4. Individuals
5. Financial institutions regulated by approved regulators and relevant associated individuals
6. Non-Bank Financial Institutions (NBFIs) regulated by approved regulators and relevant associated individuals
7. Public listed entities from approved jurisdictions and relevant associated individuals
8. Partnerships.