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Every year, our sister publication Asiamoney carries out an Offshore RMB Poll. As part of that process, the magazine asks the market for its thoughts on important renminbi topics. In this third year, we received around 2,300 valid responses, up 3% on a year ago. The ten questions included a new one on the inclusion of onshore RMB assets in global indices. Here we present the answers to the final five questions.
How many new RMB hubs do you expect to have in 2017? (Total responses: 1,618)
Last year a majority of respondents said they expected less than five RMB business hubs to be set up. That ended up being a good call, with just three offshore clearing banks getting PBoC's blessing in New York, Moscow and Dubai. Yet, less may be more. After all, a single RMB hub in a financial centre such as New York may well accomplish more than a dozen hubs across several smaller markets.
For 2017, the survey found that an even larger proportion (58%) expect less than five hubs to see the light of day. With no appointments so far, it looks like respondents may well be right. Overall, the strategy of frequently appointing clearing banks may be coming to an end, in part because most of the global and regional financial centres are pretty much covered by the existing network of 23 hubs. That does not mean the regulators may not surprise us with some creative decisions, possibly in regions...