I am confident that this constructive engagement in which regulators across our regional blocs have worked together will continue in other equivalence assessments, such as in the areas of financial benchmarks and organised markets or trading platforms. As we have learnt from past experience, greater clarity in equivalence assessments, including in relation to timing, can help provide greater certainty and thereby support the continued participation of European market participants in overseas markets and vice versa. International standards and peer assessments as basis for equivalence assessment Allow me to highlight one area where international standards and peer assessments have allowed a good basis for equivalence assessment – for financial market infrastructure (FMI). Market functioning, and therefore financial stability, is dependent on the continuity and orderly operation of services provided by these infrastructures. The multilateral nature of FMIs also mean that their services are often cross-border and accessed by a wide range of market participants. Since the development of the PFMI by IOSCO and the BIS Committee for Payments and Market Infrastructures (CPMI), these standards have been used by many regulators including Singapore as a key basis for comparability assessments. CPMI-IOSCO has also been conducting Level 2 assessments of jurisdictions’ implementation of the PFMI. Assessments of the EU, Japan, US and Australia are complete, and assessments of Singapore and Hong Kong are under way. Such peer assessments against international standards will help to promote greater understanding and alignment amongst various jurisdictions’ frameworks. Peer assessments have also helped to identify and close gaps at the entity level.

Ong Chong Tee: Financial integration – a collective effort towards efficient and resilient markets Speech by Mr Ong Chong Tee, Deputy Managing Director (Financial Supervision) of the Monetary Authority of Singapore, at the Launch Event for EU-Asia -Pacific Forum on Financial Regulation, Singapore, 14 October 2016. * * * Mr Olivier Guersent, Director General for Financial Stability, Financial Services and Capital Markets Union (European Commission) Dr Michael Pulch, EU Ambassador to Singapore, Mr Ashley Alder, Chair of the IOSCO Board and Chief Executive of Hong Kong SFC, Mr Ryozo Himino, APRC Chairman and Vice-Minister of International Affairs, Japan FSA, Mr Paul Andrews, IOSCO Secretary General, Distinguished guests, ladies and gentlemen, On behalf of all my colleagues at the MAS, let me extend a warm welcome to everyone at this launch event of the EU - Asia- Pacific Forum on Financial Regulation. It is a privilege and honour for the MAS to host this inaugural forum on financial regulation between the EU authorities and members of the IOSCO Asia-Pacific Regional Committee (APRC). This launch event will no doubt set the stage for the in-depth closed-door discussions to follow over the course of today. The impetus for this forum is a recognition that the financial markets of Europe and Asia are increasingly inter-connected. One measure, for example, is the total portfolio assets held by investors from the largest five EU economies1, in the Asia and Pacific region 2.