China’s renminbi qualified foreign institutional investor (RQFII) and qualified foreign institutional investor (QFII) schemes allow foreign institutional investors to invest in onshore assets using offshore RMB and US dollars, respectively.
Pioneer Asset Management and Blackrock Fund Advisors received RQFII quotas for the first time with amounts of RMB 500m ($72.8m) and RMB 11bn, respectively, according to China’s State Administration of Foreign Exchange (SAFE).
Blackrock already has RQFII quotas for its other entities, which include Blackrock Asset Management North Asia (RMB 2bn), Blackrock (Singapore) (RMB 20bn), Blackrock Advisors (UK) (RMB 2.1bn).
In the QFII space, Da Cheng International Asset Management Company and Mitsubishi UFJ Kokusai Asset Management received QFII quotas for the first time with amounts of $200m and $100m, respectively.
In December, Pioneer and Da Feng received licences from the China Securities Regulatory Commission (CSRC), as reported.
Additional quotas were given to Goldman Sachs & Co ($600m for a total of $900m), J.P. Morgan Securities ($500m for a total of $1bn) and China International Capital Corporation Hong Kong ($500m for a total of $1.1bn).
Separately, the CSRC granted CIMB-Principal Asset Management an RQFII licence in January, according to the regulator’s records. The CSRC also gave CMB International Asset Management, BOB Scotia International Asset Management and FSS Trustee Corporation QFII licences.
Since the programmes began, in total, SAFE has awarded around RMB 541.1bn in RQFII quotas to 181 licence holders and $89.2bn in QFII quotas to 278 licence holders, according to SAFE.
In total, there are 218 RQFII and 308 QFII licence holders, according to the CSRC.
RQFII and QFII bring capital into China. By comparison, the Qualified Domestic Institutional Investor (QDII) scheme provides quota for onshore investors to invest offshore.
However, SAFE stopped issuing new QDII quota in March 2015 due to concern over capital outflows and the subsequent effect on the RMB currency.
