Remarks by SFST on enhanced regulation of licensed money lenders at media session
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Reporter: About the money lenders regulations, so what are the impacts of these new measures that you are expected? The second question is regarding the Middle East situation. Can you recap in English, what's the situation's impact on Hong Kong's, especially financial and family office business? And how would it affect the foreign investment? Thank you.
Secretary for Financial Services and the Treasury: In response to your first question about the measures that we put together in the money lenders regime. I would say that the proposed measures that we have are very targeted in terms of issues that we need to deal with. I think one of the issues that we come across very often is that many households are being used as referees in some of these lending activities of their domestic helpers. So that's why from August 1 this year, we require that no more such requirement can be imposed on in the lending activities, in a sense that no referee will be required in such lending activities with a view to protecting our citizens.
Secondly, I would say, in terms of the overall approach that we take to deal with this money lending regime is that we are applying a rather equivalent requirement, not just to domestic helpers but everybody with a monthly income below $12,000. In this regard, we have applied a ratio which is applicable to the proportion of money on a monthly basis that need to repay the debt, and at the same time to make sure that all the lenders in this regime will be able to share information such that there's no one single individual who try to borrow from different lenders can circumvent the requirement.
In response to your second question about how we see the Middle East. As you all can see, on the financial services side, the stability, the safety and also sophistication of financial centre are more robust than ever in terms of how we are being viewed internationally and also domestically. That's why against this backdrop, we are proposing some measures to strengthen our role as an asset and wealth management centre in the current regime where many investors would like to diversify their investments. And that's why we have a law in place to be proposed to the legislature with a view to extending the tax concession that we are going to give to family offices and also to the funds that are eligible, in such a way that they will be qualified for tax concession for a wider spectrum of products. At the same time, in two weeks' time, we are going to launch our annual Wealth for Good Summit for family offices such that we can bring these advantages to the international family office ecosystem. As we gather from Invest Hong Kong, in fact a few of the Middle Eastern families are already in town, trying to anticipate our event and at the same time to know more about what we have to offer for family offices and also corporate investors in terms of our asset management businesses.
(Please also refer to the Chinese portion of the remarks.)
Ends/Sunday, March 15, 2026
Issued at HKT 13:42
Issued at HKT 13:42
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