BNP Paribas’s asset management arm has secured a Renminbi Qualified Foreign Institutional Investor licence from Chinese regulators, which the French firm said makes it one of the first in the eurozone to win such authorisation.

BNP Paribas’s asset management arm has secured a Renminbi Qualified Foreign Institutional Investor licence from Chinese regulators, which the French firm said makes it one of the first in the eurozone to win such authorisation.

The Chinese Regulatory Commission has granted the RQFII to BNP Paribas Investment Partners, which gives the Paris-listed firm access to China’s capital markets, including those A-shares and onshore bonds denominated in RMB.

The licences are part of how China, the world’s second-largest economy, is trying to boost the status of its currency as a global reserve store of value.

“The French authorities were the first in the eurozone to obtain the RQFII quota in March 2014. RMB internationalisation is indeed rapidly developing and will continue to impact the global financial landscape in the coming years,” Ligia Torres, head of Asia-Pacific and emerging markets at BNP Paribas Investment Partners, said.

China relaxed rules on how investment firms can use quotas for the Asian country’s domestic capital markets, it was reported earlier in the summer this year. The move is designed to speed up repatriation of offshore RMB funds to China and make the quota system more efficient. The RQFII programme was launched three years ago.

The system has not been without some problems. According to the Financial Times newspaper yesterday, strong demand to hold Chinese stocks has forced some providers of exchange traded funds to close them to fresh investment. Many China-linked ETFs, the article said, rely on the RQFII scheme. The article said China has so far apportioned RQFII quotas to financial hubs such as London and Singapore. Hong Kong remains the largest centre for RQFII investment with a quota of RMB 270 billion ($44 billion).