China’s new leadership has unveiled plans to accelerate financial liberalisation measures that offer significant potential opportunities to domestic and foreign financial institutions. One banker in the eighth edition PwC’s Foreign Banks in China survey noted, in this regard, that “China’s macroeconomic situation has dramatically changed in 2013. Future policy and regulatory changes, such as RMB internationalisation and interest rate liberalisation, will have a dramatic impact on the strategies of foreign banks”.

Many foreign banks expect to “stay the course” on their China strategies while waiting for the benefits of reform and regulatory changes to become clearer.

While foreign banks do not have the scale of their principal domestic competitors, the report shows that foreign banks in China are considering expanding into new businesses, such as offering more services to SMEs. Other areas that interest them include winning mandates from SOEs that are restructuring and going global, offering rural banking services, pushing inland to follow manufacturing growth, and launching e-banking or other services.