Asia Focus

This Asia Focus examines the role that non-banks play in retail payment systems, compares the structure of the retail payments industry in United States and China, and discusses potential risks to the financial system.

This Asia Focus discusses Asia’s experience with priority sector lending, reviews the current state-level priority sector lending policies in several Asian economies, assesses the implications for the respective domestic banking systems, and examines potential alternative mechanisms to encourage lending to priority sectors.

This Asia Focus report explains the importance of interest rate liberalization in China, reviews historical progress and current efforts made to date, and discusses the potential impact on the banking sector.

This Asia Focus report explores the use of m-payments in Asia and evaluates the challenges it faces regarding wider adoption. Specifically, this report clarifies what an m-payment is, identifies which factors are facilitating and hindering the use of m-payments by consumers in certain economies of Asia, and summarizes key issues this new payment technology presents to government regulators.

This Asia Focus provides an overview of shadow banking activities in China, their close ties with banks, reasons behind their rapid rise, the range of participants and products, and regulatory issues.

Global money laundering and terrorist financing activities impose significant costs on the world economy by damaging the effective operations of national economies. This Asia Focus report reviews some of the unique factors that contribute to money laundering in Asia, describes international AML/CFT standards, analyzes the region’s progress towards fuller compliance with FATF recommendations, and outlines challenges that remain.

On June 11-12, 2012, the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco (FRBSF) held its fifth Conference on Asian Banking and Finance in San Francisco, entitled “Challenges in Global Finance: The Role of Asia.” Conference participants discussed how the ongoing economic and financial uncertainties in Europe will impact the Asian economies, banking sectors and trade flows; and how Asian banks and financial institutions themselves are addressing these issues.

Accounting regulatory regimes play a critical role in ensuring the reliability of financial data and the credibility of a company, and ultimately in supporting the stability of an economy. Prompted in part by the U.S. actions taken pursuant to the Sarbanes-Oxley Act, many Asian economies have established similar regulatory bodies and standards for their domestic accounting industry.