China Securities Regulatory Commission (CSRC) is now consulting some blockchain companies on ICOs, China Business News exclusively reports; now it is in the phase of collecting suggestions and having discussions; CSRC will particularly keep tabs on the fraud projects that raise money in the guise of cryptocurrencies and ICOs. Source (Chinese)
Central Bank of Bahrain (CBB) has announced the first members of its new regulatory sandbox: NOW Money and Tramonex; H.E. Khalid Al Rumaihi, chief executive of the Economic Development Board of Bahrain (EDB) explains to AltFi, "In addition to the development of the regulatory sandbox, we have a number of further initiatives we expect to be launched in the coming months including a venture capital fund-of-funds."; NOW Money offers users in the Gulf region mobile banking and Tramonex helps companies process and transfer funds online. Source
Dianrong and FinEX Asia have launched Asia's first fintech asset management platform; established in 2017, FinEX Asia connects Asian investors with US consumer lending assets, such as credit card loans, giving Asian investors access to a diverse portfolio of US consumer credit investments; FinEX Asia's fintech solutions offer risk modeling capabilities, blockchain data security, performance monitoring and secondary marketplace liquidity. Source
Hong Kong's Securities and Futures Commission has entered into a cooperation agreement with the Dubai Financial Services Authority (DFSA) to establish a framework to help each other develop the fintech industry; the two regulators will work together on information sharing, innovation projects and referrals of fintech firms seeking to enter one another's markets. Source
Singapore based fintech company Trade Finance Market (TFM) recently launched their Invoice Check solution to cut down on trade finance fraud; the new blockchain based registry will help stop invoices from being paid more than once; they built the solution in the past year on the ethereum blockchain and it uses smart contracts; "Our system is in public beta and provides a manual method of entering invoices and having them checked against a blockchain-hosted database. This data is stored on the blockchain and funders are alerted if there is a potential risk of double financing," Raj Uttamchandani, the company's executive director, tells Global Trade Review. Source
Regional remittance firm UAE Exchange partners with Ripple to facilitate instant international money transfers; UAE Exchange serves 31 countries and has over 800 offices in the Middle East region; Ripple uses their Ripple Consensus Ledger to link international firms and facilitate real-time money transfers; CryptoCoinsNews reports that UAE Exchange Group CEO Promoth Manghat stated to Arabian Business, "UAE Exchange has been investing significantly in blockchain technology, we are in the process of tying up a deal with distributed ledger startup Ripple, for real-time cross border payments."; this is the second regional financial firm to enlist Ripple, National Bank of Abu Dhabi partnered with Ripple in February. Source
ICOINFO, one of China's largest ICO exchange platforms, announces the suspension of new project launches, awaiting relevant regulatory rules; users will not be able to add value to their accounts during the suspension. Source
National Internet Finance Association (NIFA) of China on August 30 released ICOs risk alerts; the Association highlights two kinds of risks: 1) some projects raise money in the name of ICO with misguided publicity and this may lead to illegal fundraising; 2) the assets of some ICO projects remain unclear and the information disclosure is far from sufficient. Source (Chinese)
As of December 2016, shadow loans in China reported an annual increase of approximately 15% to 14.1 trillion yuan ($2.3 trillion); a study by UBS reports that as the market grows one area adding increased risk is regional banks, specifically banks located in China's Rust Belt region, which have been integrating the shadow loans into various methods for diversifying their balance sheet risk as the steel and metal-producing provinces struggle to remain profitable in the changing economy; the UBS report says alternative financial statement accounting regarding the loans could lead to a number of issues including overstated capital adequacy ratios, understated nonperforming loans and reduced provision charges. Source
Compares blockchain to a library cataloging system; explains public and private blockchain and the centralized way information is stored creating a distributed ledger; also reports on the blockchain solutions offered by Othera which include loan tokenization for secondary trading. Source