China’s renminbi qualified 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.
Eastspring Investments (Singapore) received an RQFII quota for the first time last month, which amounted to RMB 275m ($39.9m), according to China’s State Administration of Foreign Exchange (SAFE).
Eastspring already has QFII quotas for its other entities, which include Eastspring in Hong Kong ($350m) and Eastspring Securities Investment Trust ($20m).
In the QFII space, CMB International Asset Management and FSS Trustee Corporation received QFII quotas for the first time in the amounts of $300m and $500m, respectively.
Swedish pension fund Andra AP-fonden received an additional $255m in QFII quotas, for a total of $655m, SAFE data shows.
Separately, the China Securities Regulatory Commission (CSRC) awarded US firm VanEck Investments an RQFII licence and Haitong Bank a QFII licence in February.
Since the programmes began, in total, SAFE awarded around RMB 541.4bn in RQFII quotas to 182 licence holders and $90.3bn in QFII quotas to 280 licence holders, according to SAFE.
In total, there are 219 RQFII and 309 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 onshore.
However, SAFE stopped issuing new QDII quota in March 2015 due to concern over capital outflows and the subsequent effect on the RMB currency.
