(Yicai) July 17 -- China is preparing its latest expansion of Qualified Domestic Institutional Investor quotas, amid growing demand from mainland investors for offshore assets.

“Recently, we have been stepping up relevant preparation work to strive for the issuance of a new round of QDII quotas as soon as possible, to better support and serve domestic residents’ genuine and compliant overseas securities investment demands,” Xiao Sheng, head of the Capital Account Management Department of the State Administration of Foreign Exchange, said today.

The new quotas will benefit market institutions with strong investment management capabilities and robust compliance awareness and management standards, enabling them to play a stronger role in QDII business, Xiao said, adding that priority will be given to public fund products in order to increase access for retail investors.

SAFE had already signaled the release of a new batch of QDII quotas a month ago at the Lujiazui Forum, a regular high-level economic conference in Shanghai.

 

As of the end of June 2026, a total of 193 institutions across banking, securities and funds, insurance, and trust sectors had received cumulative QDII investment quotas of USD176.17 billion, an increase of USD5.3 billion from USD170.87 billion at the end of December last year, according to SAFE data. The quota for securities and fund institutions has reached USD97.28 billion.

 

The Hong Kong and U.S. markets are the two main QDII investment destinations, jointly accounting for over 90 percent of the total.

 

As mainland investors’ demand for global assets continues to rise, QDII will play an increasingly important role and will promote the two-way opening of financial markets, said a research report by China Securities.

The QDII scheme was introduced in 2006. It allows domestic institutions to invest in overseas capital markets, mainly through mutual and exchange traded funds.

Editor: Tom Litting