Businesses offering financial services in Hong Kong are reportedly already making the necessary preliminary preparations to offer their goods and services to individual retail investors, regional media reports.

It has been claimed that brokers and fund managers in the region have made consultations on essential help on licensing requirements in preparation for the new regulations.

The Hong Kong Anti-Money Laundering and Terrorist Financing Ordinance was reviewed during the month of December 2022 by local legislators (AMLO). The legislature has given its approval to this change, which is in line with the existing attitude in the region regarding the expansion of opportunities for cryptocurrency trading.

Because the amendment creates a new licensing structure for virtual asset service providers, it will now be possible for individual investors to participate in virtual asset trading as a direct result of the amendment. Currently, the buying and selling of digital assets is restricted only to experienced investors and traders who can prove they have at least $1 million in tradable assets in their possession.

Victory Securities and Interactive Brokers were the first two brokers in Hong Kong to receive SFC approval to trade digital assets for their respective firms’ professional clients.

Consumers who are interested in trading Hong Kong-listed exchange-traded fund futures that are based on Bitcoin they do not require a specialist license at this time for Hong Kong-based brokers to be able to serve those clients. However, companies wishing to offer virtual asset transactions will need additional authorization from the SFC in order to do so.

March 1 of this year was supposed to mark the beginning of the implementation of the new licensing criteria. However, to give companies that provide services for virtual assets additional time to prepare properly, the deadline has been pushed back to June 1.

This comes as a direct result of the recent selection of Julia Leung for the role of SFC CEO. She has already stated that she is in favor of tougher laws governing cryptocurrency in the local area.