The Hong Kong Monetary Authority and the Bank Negara Malaysia have agreed to strengthen bilateral collaborations, following a high-level meeting in Hong Kong last week.
The two central banking institutions exchanged information and experiences and had comprehensive discussions covering macroeconomic and financial development; emerging banking regulatory issues; fintech and payment transformation; and strategies for advancing capital market connectivity, local currency usage and Islamic finance, according to the HKMA.
Both parties agreed to step up collaborations in the following areas:
- Fintech and digital asset innovation
- Establish a joint policy-focused workstream to promote compliant cross-border stablecoin use cases
- Enhance collaboration on tokenization and digital money
- Explore opportunities for collaboration and facilitate knowledge sharing on data-driven applications, including commercial data interchange (CDI) and CargoX, to expand trade finance access for SMEs in both economies.
- Cross-border regulatory collaboration
- Establish mechanisms to strengthen cross-border cyber resilience, as well as anti-scam and anti-fraud efforts.
- Local currency usage and infrastructure linkages
- Promote the broader adoption of local currencies in bilateral trade and investment.
- Enhance connectivity between the real-time gross settlement (RTGS) systems in Hong Kong and Malaysia.
- Capital market connectivity
- Explore central securities depository (CSD) linkage between Hong Kong’s CMU and the real-time electronic transfer of funds and securities system (RENTAS), Malaysia’s multi-currency RTGS and CSD.
- Enhance collaboration to advance Islamic finance market development and connectivity through supporting industry engagement, talent development, sustainable finance and cross-border investment.
The meeting marks an important milestone in deepening collaboration between the two institutions to support financial market development and economic growth, said Eddie Yue Wai-man, chief executive of the HKMA.
“We look forward to advancing cooperation in fintech and digital asset innovation, improving the efficiency of cross-border local currency transactions, strengthening market connectivity, and fostering the growth of the Islamic finance market,” Yue said.
