Authorised Institutions To Implement The New Mandatory Reference Checking Scheme By May 2023

On 5 May 2022, the Hong Kong Monetary Authority (HKMA) announced its endorsement of the Guidelines on the Mandatory Reference Checking Scheme (respectively, Guidelines and MRC Scheme) issued by the Hong Kong Association of Banks and the DTC Association - just one year after issuing the Consultation Conclusions Paper (covered in our previous bulletin).

The MRC Scheme has been launched as an effort to curb the "rolling bad apples" phenomenon in the banking sector in Hong Kong, by enhancing the disclosure of the employment history of prospective employees taking up regulated roles among authorised institutions (AIs). The MRC Scheme will be launched in two phases, and AIs are given 12 months (ie. up to 2 May 2023) to put in place the necessary internal controls, policies and procedures, for the implementation of Phase 1 of the MRC Scheme (Phase 1).