Hong Kong’s wealth hub faces a leaner future

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The author is a Reuters Breakingviews columnist. The opinions expressed are his own.
By Ka Sing Chan
HONG KONG, June 18 (Reuters Breakingviews) - China backs Hong Kong as an offshore financial hub, but its priorities are shifting. Beijing is no longer turning a blind eye to how its citizens move money abroad via the city while recasting the hub as a base for managing corporate cash as Chinese firms expand globally. That pivot has big implications for AIA 1299.HK, Prudential PRU.L, 2378.HK, Standard Chartered STAN.L and HSBC HSBA.L, 0005.HK.
Beijing is tightening the screws on capital outflows. Last month, regulators fined three online brokers, including Futu Holdings, a combined $330 million for facilitating offshore share trading from the mainland without licences. Investors are supposed to stick to closed-loop schemes like Stock Connect, which enable Chinese to buy Hong Kong stocks without undermining capital controls on the yuan. It is the toughest crackdown since 2016, when officials sought to prop up the yuan after a market crash.
The latest fallout was swift. Banks suspended opening Hong Kong accounts for mainland clients that could be used for overseas investing. Authorities are concerned such products allow money to leak into foreign markets.
The timing is awkward. Hong Kong only just overtook Switzerland as the world’s top cross-border wealth hub, according ​to Boston Consulting Group, with offshore assets up 10% to $2.95 trillion, driven by mainland flows. It expects another 9% growth this year, or $260 billion in absolute terms.
Hong Kong’s success has long relied on tolerated grey zones. There is a $50,000 annual foreign-exchange quota per individual per year for funding things such as travel or medical expenses, not investing. Yet it is an open secret that the quota functions as one of the building blocks for moving household wealth offshore via Hong Kong.
Life insurance sales ⁠in Hong Kong jumped 50% to a record $42 billion last year. At AIA, Hong Kong generated $2.3 billion in new business value last year, or 39% of the group total. Of that, mainland Chinese visitors contributed 51%.
HSBC’s Hong Kong franchise has been a major beneficiary. Deposits have risen 50% since early 2023, about 70% from non-residents. Nearly 2 million new customers have pushed its base to 7 million, and the bank’s Hong Kong CEO Maggie Ng expects it soon to rival the city’s 7.5 million population.
Loopholes that once allowed insurers to ​suck up clients' money onshore and settle ​it offshore may close as ⁠scrutiny tightens. Wealth flows will slow if banks and insurers force customers to more clearly document the source of their money or begin tracing the origins of existing assets. 
U.S. Treasury Department data show mainland China and Hong Kong investors held more than $600 billion in U.S. equities by June last year, nearly double 2020 levels – at least in part due to soaring stocks. Amid a trade war with Washington, Beijing would prefer to steer household wealth away from U.S. AI stocks like Nvidia NVDA.O and SpaceX and back into domestic markets.
Customer acquisition is another major grey zone. Banks can legally open accounts for mainland visitors in Hong Kong but are barred from soliciting business onshore. In practice, the journey often starts before the border, as private bankers and agents travel to the mainland and reach clients through referrals and social media networks such as Tencent’s 0700.HK WeChat.
Financial giants are heavily exposed to this cross-border money. In the first week of June, as crackdown fears grew, HSBC, StanChart, AIA and Prudential lost nearly $30 billion in market value. On a multiple of nearly 12 times forward earnings, that points to about $2.6 billion of profit at risk, or roughly 10%–20% of their 2025 earnings from Hong Kong and mainland China, on Breakingviews estimates. Bank stocks have since recovered, but AIA and Prudential still trade 10% lower.
Speaking at a public forum last week, Hong Kong’s financial secretary Paul Chan urged institutions to ensure funds flow through proper channels. If Hong Kong can win the trust and alleviate concerns over leakage of foreign exchange, he said, the city can “inspire the confidence” of Chinese authorities and “move forward on a more sustainable basis”.  
Financial institutions must now judge what constitutes sustainable. Traditionally, Chinese households have heavily invested in real estate. With property prices under pressure since 2020, capital is now edging into higher-yielding or more stable assets such as equities, funds and insurance. Offshore investment forms an important part of that reallocation.
Policymakers see a benefit. Redirecting savings helps ease China’s fiscal burden of supporting an ageing population. Flows to Hong Kong at least keep wealth within a system under Beijing’s gaze rather than pushing it to rival hubs like Singapore while also limiting upward pressure on the yuan, which China doesn't want to appreciate too fast.
However, Chan is also talking up other opportunities, including a bigger role for the city in managing the growing offshore cash piles of Chinese companies, as groups like BYD 002594.SZ and Contemporary Amperex Technology 300750.SZ expand overseas.
That requires centralised management of foreign exchange hedging, interest rate risk and counterparty risk. Last week, the Hong Kong government unveiled measures to enhance tax incentives and introduce pre-approval mechanisms to bolster Hong Kong’s attractiveness as a hub for corporate treasury centres. According to official data, China’s stock of outbound direct investment has reached nearly $3 trillion. This provides an institutional counterpart to wealth management flows.
According to data from the Hong Kong Monetary Authority, there were 500 corporate treasury centres in Hong Kong at the end of 2024, well short of China’s more than 50,000 overseas enterprises across 190 countries by the end of December.
Yet managing the assets of companies is a high-volume, lower-margin business. HSBC's corporate banking segment generated a 14.9% return on tangible equity in 2025, compared with 17.8% for its international wealth unit. The bank's Hong Kong division, supported by recurring wealth fees, posted a 35.5% return last year. 
Hong Kong is well-placed to capture large, strategic flows tied to Beijing’s priorities. Whether it can continue to thrive as a Switzerland of the East and outpace its European rival is far less certain.
     
                
CONTEXT NEWS
The China Securities Regulatory Commission on May 22 said it will give three brokerages, including the Nasdaq-listed Futu Holdings, $330 million in combined fines for illegally providing offshore trading services to mainland clients.

(Editing by Una Galani; Production by Ujjaini Dutta)
((For previous columns by the author, Reuters customers can click on CHAN/ KaSing.Chan@thomsonreuters.com))