Implementation of trust registration system

The past couple of years has been a period of leapfrog growth for the trust sector. At the end of June 2017, the assets under management (AUM) of 68 trust companies in China reached more than RMB23 trillion (US$3.46 trillion). Despite their popularity among investors, owing to security and high returns, trust products have been perceived as mysterious in China due to the lack of a unified trust registration system.

Now those days are gone. On 30 August 2017, the China Banking Regulatory Commission (CBRC) issued the Notice on Circulating the Measures for the Administration of Trust Registration, which structured a unified trust registration system for the trust sector. As the Measures for the Administration of Trust Registration took effect on 1 September 2017, the underlying trust registration system was formally introduced on the same day, marking a milestone in the history of the trust sector.

Since the implementation of the Measures from 1 September, the number of trust registration transactions of various categories has been steadily rising. According to data from the official website of China Trust Registration (China TRC), as at 30 September, its system had received more than 4,000 applications for trust registration from 68 trust companies across the country, which included more than 3,700 related to preliminary registration and more than 300 to initial registration, as well as the first applications for alteration registration and corrective registration, respectively. More than 3,500 trusts were assigned the exclusive code through the system. At the date of writing this article, the basic particulars of 79 pooled trusts had been published on China TRC’s website.