Asia Financial Regulatory Bulletin - February 2026

In Singapore, the beginning of 2026 has seen a slow start to regulatory activity, although there have been some important updates to the compliance toolkits on incident reporting, reflecting a global focus among regulators on operational resilience. Meanwhile in Hong Kong, there has been a busy start to the year in terms of regulatory activity across a variety of areas including risk management.

This monthly bulletin provides a snapshot of the most important regulatory changes in Singapore and Hong Kong. To receive a more detailed list of the regulatory developments, please sign up to our monthly newsletter below.

Key developments: 

Hong Kong SAR: 

• The Securities and Futures Commission (SFC) has issued a circular warning licensed corporations acting as IPO sponsors about substandard conduct and declining quality of listing documentation and introducing new related requirements.

• The SFC and the Hong Kong Monetary Authority (HKMA) are consulting on proposals to standardise the calculation periods under the OTC derivative clearing rules.

• The HKMA has published guidance, “Practice Guide on Cloud Adoption” applicable to banks using cloud technology solutions.

• The HKMA has published good practices on the management of operational risk of trading activities, as well as a circular focusing on liquidity stress testing, contingency planning and monitoring tools to assist banks in strengthening their risk controls.

• In the ESG space, the HKMA has published the Hong Kong Taxonomy for Sustainable Finance Phase 2A.

Singapore

• The Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS) has published a consultation seeking feedback on proposed legislative amendments to facilitate dual listings between the US and Singapore.

• MAS updated various compliance toolkits to include new incident reporting requirements related to system malfunctions and IT security incidents.

• MAS also completed enforcement cases in the areas of market misconduct and inadequate risk management frameworks.