President of the Hong Kong Securities and Futures Professionals Association: The regulatory approach for virtual assets should not be applied to the traditional securities industry.

Chan Chi-wah, president of the Hong Kong Securities and Futures Professionals Association, commented on the controversy surrounding the "pre-registration of designated bank accounts" for brokerage clients. He stated that while the regulatory circular proposed establishing a bank account registration mechanism with caps, this practice may stem from the inappropriate application of virtual asset regulatory approaches (such as pre-approval of wallet addresses) to the traditional securities industry. Chan pointed out that while pre-approval is technically justifiable for virtual assets due to the difficulty in instantly verifying ownership of blockchain addresses, traditional securities fund flows can already be confirmed through mechanisms such as "same-name account verification," eliminating the need for a blanket restriction on the number of accounts. In contrast to the EU's anti-money laundering framework, the regulatory focus should be on penetrating beneficial ownership and identifying abnormal transactions, rather than pre-restricting accounts. He also suggested that regulators adhere to a "risk-based" principle, focusing on abnormal fund flows (such as "layered transactions"), clarifying compliance standards for same-name accounts, and promoting the application of big data and AI in anti-money laundering monitoring. (Orange News)