Hong Kong’s AFRC and SFC Sign MoU Extending Financial Reporting Oversight to Licensed Virtual Asset Firms

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• Hong Kong’s Accounting and Financial Reporting Council and the Securities and Futures Commission signed a new memorandum of understanding on September 28, 2026
• The MoU extends regulatory cooperation on financial and compliance reporting to SFC-licensed virtual asset service providers, alongside licensed corporations, SFC-authorised funds, and registered open-ended fund companies
• The agreement also covers related audit and assurance work tied to those newly included categories of licensed entities

Hong Kong’s Accounting and Financial Reporting Council and the Securities and Futures Commission signed a new memorandum of understanding on September 28, 2026, according to a press release published on the AFRC’s official website. The agreement extends the two regulators’ existing cooperation on financial and compliance reporting to a wider set of licensed entities.

Under the new MoU, that cooperation now explicitly covers SFC-licensed virtual asset service providers, alongside licensed corporations, SFC-authorised funds, and registered open-ended fund companies. The agreement also extends to the related audit and assurance work tied to financial reporting by those categories of firms.

“This MoU marks an important milestone in the longstanding partnership between the AFRC and the SFC,” said Dr David Sun, chairman of the AFRC, in the release, framing the expanded scope as a continuation of an existing regulatory relationship rather than an entirely new oversight structure.

Bringing SFC-licensed virtual asset service providers explicitly within the scope of AFRC-SFC financial reporting cooperation formalizes audit and reporting oversight for a category of firm that has grown substantially in Hong Kong since the territory began licensing virtual asset trading platforms, giving regulators a clearer joint framework for reviewing how those firms report and are audited going forward.

The move fits into Hong Kong’s broader approach of extending its existing securities and funds regulatory apparatus to cover licensed crypto firms rather than building an entirely separate oversight regime, a strategy the territory has followed consistently since introducing its virtual asset service provider licensing framework, aiming to hold crypto firms operating under an SFC license to financial reporting and audit standards comparable to those already applied to traditional licensed corporations and funds.

Hong Kong has positioned itself as a leading regional hub for regulated virtual asset activity in recent years, and extending established financial reporting oversight mechanisms to licensed virtual asset firms is widely seen as part of the territory’s effort to make its crypto licensing regime attractive to institutional participants who expect the same audit rigor and regulatory cooperation they would find in more traditional, long-established financial sectors.