Asia Financial Regulatory update - April 2026

Last month, regulators in Hong Kong and Singapore continued to advance their respective regulatory agendas across fintech, capital markets and risk management. In Hong Kong, the city's four financial regulators expanded the Generative AI Sandbox to a broader range of financial intermediaries, the HKMA set out expectations for banks to plan for emerging digital technologies and the SFC confirmed the launch date for the uncertificated securities market. In Singapore, MAS published transition planning guidelines for financial institutions, consulted on updated operational risk and third-party risk management frameworks and announced the completion of an AI risk management toolkit for the financial sector.

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

Key developments: 

Hong Kong SAR: 

• Hong Kong's four financial regulators have expanded the Generative AI Sandbox beyond banks to a wider range of regulated financial intermediaries, enabling participants to develop and trial AI-driven products in a controlled environment.

• The HKMA has issued expectations for banks to develop formal long-term business plans addressing the adoption of emerging digital technologies, including distributed ledger technology (DLT), agentic AI and high-performance computing.

• The SFC has announced that the uncertificated securities market (USM) will launch on 16 November 2026, requiring all newly listed securities to be issued in paperless form from the date of listing.

Singapore:

• MAS has published guidelines on transition planning for banks, insurers and asset managers, setting out supervisory expectations for financial institutions to assess and manage climate-related risks as part of a sound transition planning process. Although the guidelines differ in some respects from international standards, we expect international FIs will be able to build on existing work done in the EU, in order to implement the guidelines in Singapore. Read more on our blog post.

• MAS has published consultation papers on proposed updates to its Guidelines on Operational Risk Management and proposed new Guidelines on Third-Party Risk Management, expanding the regulatory scope beyond outsourcing to cover all third-party arrangements. These will require significant uplifts from clients and so clients are already considering their existing procedures against the new requirements.

• MAS has announced the completion of an AI Risk Management Toolkit for the financial sector, offering practical guidance on implementing AI risk management frameworks across governance, risk identification, AI lifecycle management and organisational enablers.