Speaking to the South China Morning Post, Chief Operating Officer of the HKEx, Frederick Grede, explained the reasoning behind the latest move: 'We want to ensure Hong Kong Exchanges and Clearing becomes an international futures market,' he said. 'Hong Kong has only 6.8 million people. We need more international investors to trade in our futures market to help it expand.'

At present, overseas investors wishing to trade in derivatives on the market must open an account with a Hong Kong broker and phone orders through. The brokerage staff will then execute the trades manually on the Hong Kong Automated Trading System (HKATS). However, this system is inconvenient and slow, and there is the possibility of human error.

Under the proposed system, financial professionals, brokers, bankers, and other institutional investors will be able to connect directly to HKATS, and to trade in all Hong Kong derivatives products.

Mr Grede said on Tuesday that there has already been significant interest in the new service from international investors, and that as soon as official agreements to connect to the service have been reached with a number of them, the remote access service will be formally introduced.