SFC Stakeholder Survey

Last week SFC issued the Stakeholder Survey 2006, which was a typical PR activity to identify the public perceptions of SFC. Those stakeholders include licensed firms, banks, insurers, listed companies, HKEx, accounting & law firms, HKMA, financial medias, etc.

The overall result according to the market research is of course positive, though the overall effectiveness score of SFC is only 6.7 (on a 0 to 10 scale). I am more interested in those areas with "room for improvement".

The following negative perceptions are remarkable:

High Turnover of Middle & Junior Level Staff

• As licensed firms are mainly dealing with SFC's middle & junior level staff, high turnover could significantly affect the continuity of service. I know SFC's top management often argue that their staff are just hunted by the market with a higher pay. Have they ever considered the problem of "job satisfaction" and "humanistic management"?

Clarity of Rules, Speed of Response and Consistency of Decisions

• While SFC's speed of response has improved in recent years, clarity of rules remains a major problem. Whenever we ask SFC staff to clarify their policies, "please seek your own legal advice" is the default reply. Without clarity, how could market practitioners have a consistent understanding of SFC's policies and decisions?

Unnecessary Documentation

• SFC should find additional ways to reduce the red tape. Electronic submission of applications and notifications to SFC should be more widely accepted.

In the part of quatitative survey (done by telephone interviews), I noted that only 10% of interviewees are compliance officers. This percentage sounds too low given that compliance officers have more front-line and frequent contacts with SFC. They should be able to reveal "more truth"!