HMT and MAS entered into an MoU with regards to Financial Services Regulatory Cooperation
05 July 2021
The UK and Singapore announced a new financial partnership through the release of an amended Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) to enhance relationships in financial services.
The MoU covers a range of topics, including recognising the motivation of working together, while recognising the differences in market structures, legal, regulatory and supervisory frameworks and in the range of business models that may exist between the UK and Singapore, but with one of the objectives being to enhance financial services trade and investment between the UK and Singapore..
The MoU sets forth provisions including:
- Objectives of regulatory cooperation
- Scope of regulatory cooperation
- Framework for regulatory cooperation
- Regulatory Deference
- Sharing of Information
The backdrop of the amended MoU also fed into a financial dialogue between Singapore and the UK covering:
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Green Finance and carbon markets |
Assessment and interoperability of taxonomies to stimulate cross-border sustainable (green) financial flows and identification of alignments between the UK and Singapore’s disclosures and metrics for green activities.
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TCFD Aligned Disclosures |
Climate-related financial disclosures aligned with the Task Force for Climate-related Financial Disclosures (TCFD)- notably a week after the UK FCA published its consultation on the application of TCFD aligned Entity and Product level disclosures in CP21/17. With both jurisdictions aligned with TCFD, this further enables cross-border trade ties and eases comparability of investment data for investors across both jurisdictions.
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FinTech and Stablecoins |
Technological developments and regulatory approaches across digitalised financial services, including digital money.
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This represents a further step by the UK government to enter into trade agreements post-Brexit and is likely to signal further trade relationships internationally. The alignment of the UK to the TCFD creates further opportunities to facilitate cross-border initiatives to enable access between the two jurisdictions, with closer alignment of products, services, regulatory approaches and ESG disclosures for ease of market access by investors, complemented by a proactive dialogue on digitalisation of financial services to further position both Singapore and the UK at the forefront of key market initiatives.
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