Insights from an Asia-Based Compliance Consulting Firm
Alex Esson, CEO and Founder, Peak Compliance Associates
Alex Esson, CEO and Founder, Peak Compliance Associates
Peak Compliance Associates Limited (PCA) is an award-winning Asia-focused financial services compliance consulting firm with operations in Hong Kong and Singapore. We provide compliance services to financial institutions in Asia, primarily to financial institutions that are licensed and regulated by the Securities and Futures Commission (SFC) in Hong Kong and the Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS) in Singapore.
Our services can be split into four main business lines:
(1) Licensing,
(2) Ongoing Compliance Advisory and Support,
(3) Compliance Training, and
(4) Regulatory Projects.
The types of financial institutions we service include asset managers, brokers, and investment advisory firms. In our experience, these types of businesses try to keep their operations lean and efficient. As such, they often rely upon third-party service provides like ourselves for compliance support.
(1) Licensing
Peak Compliance Associates is often engaged by financial institutions who are looking to enter the market to assist with their license application. Given that this application process takes between 6-12 months and involves preparing many documents, the majority of license applicants seek external support. When it comes to licensing in any jurisdiction, experience is incredibly important. An experienced service provider not only understands the minimum licensing requirements, but also how to pre-empt the regulator’s questions which ultimately leads to a quicker application process.
In terms of licensing, we have observed a significant increase in the number of financial institutions setting up operations in both Hong Kong and Singapore. In Hong Kong, the Securities and Futures Commission (SFC) regulates the securities market, which includes asset managers, brokers, and advisory firms.
In Singapore, the Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS) regulates an array of financial institutions, including asset managers, brokers, and advisory firms, but also banks, payments companies, and insurance firms. As of February 2025, there are around 3,250 SFC licensed firms in Hong Kong, and in Singapore, there are approximately 2,000 comparatively MAS licensed corporations. In both Hong Kong and Singapore, around 70% of the licensed corporations are asset managers, and both regulators consider the management of funds and / or segregated managed accounts for clients as requiring an asset management license.
(2) Ongoing Compliance Advisory and Support
In terms of Ongoing Compliance Advisory and Support, there are a large number of ongoing compliance obligations financial institutions must adhere to when operating as a regulated entity in Hong Kong and/ or Singapore. Where a firm does not have the budget to hire a full-time local compliance officer, and they are looking to receive expert advice on complex matters or would like support on some of the more administrative compliance tasks, engaging a third-party compliance consulting firm is common practice.
When it comes to licensing in any jurisdiction, experience is incredibly important. We have helped with hundreds of licensing applications by not only understanding the necessary licensing requirements, but also pre-empting requisitions questions which ultimately leads to a faster application processing time
(3) Compliance Training
(4) Regulatory Projects
Our Regulatory Projects team is often engaged by clients to provide support on ad-hoc projects, ranging from providing a compliance opinion on a piece of regulatory through to providing support during a regulatory inspection. In both Hong Kong and Singapore, the regulator will carry out an audit on a licensed corporation’s business every 3-7 years. Our engagement during regulatory inspections generally entails advising our clients on the nature of the regulator’s questions, the information the regulator is looking for, as well as how to provide responses in a way which aligns to the regulator’s expectations.
If you are a financial institution and are looking for licensing or compliance services in Hong Kong or Singapore, please don’t hesitate to reach out to Peak Compliance Associates at info@pcacompliance.com or call us at +852 9161 3506 (HK) or +65 8805 2610 (SG).
