Shanghai, China

yuanky@sraslaw.com

Practice focus

Kevin Yuan has rich experience in legal, compliance and management of financial industry. Kevin currently focuses on Digital Transformation, Cross-border Finance and Regulatory Compliance, including: digital transformation of financial businesses and services, cross-border financial transactions, the establishment, M&A and restructuring of multinational financial institutions, asset and wealth management, as well as other related non-litigation and litigation services in financial area.

Before joining the firm, Kevin was the Senior Counsel of leading international and PRC firms, and had been taking the top management roles in multinational banks, insurance company and fin-tech enterprise, and providing professional advices and leadership in various functions of legal, compliance, anti-money laundering, risk control and corporate governance. Since 2002, he successively worked as Head of Connected Transactions Control of Bank of China (Head Office), Vice President and Board Secretary of HSBC Life Insurance Ltd., Head of Legal & Compliance Consumer Banking of Standard Chartered Bank (China) Ltd., Founding Partner of Balance Finance Consulting, and Chief Compliance Officer of LianLian Digital Group.

His clients are mainly leading commercial banks, insurance companies, securities companies, fund houses, asset/wealth management companies, private banks and family offices.

Representative clients, cases or matters

Relevant Experience

- Represented the large Chinese banks to provide legal and compliance advice on their digitalization projects of supply chain finance, global market business and online wealth management product sales, etc .

- Advised the overseas financial institutions on legal and compliance issues related to the NFT and Metaverse projects in China.

- Represented several overseas financial institutions to provide legal and compliance advice on their cross-border business activities.

- Represented several overseas financial institutions to provide legal and compliance advice on their regulatory license application and M&A in financial sector, covering the business of banking, securities, electronic payment, and consumer finance, etc.

- Represented the wealth management companies in China to provide legal and compliance advice on their establishment and opening, and cooperate governance, internal control and investment projects.

- Provided legal and compliance advice on personal information and data protection in China and cross-border transfer of a number of well-known overseas financial institutions.

- Provided legal and compliance advice on Anti-Money laundering for several well-known international financial companies.

- Provided  legal opinions to multinational banks in their Global Market, FIs, SOEs & Transnational Clients business, Consumer & SME banking, and Private banking.

- Provided legal and compliance solutions for a number of leading financial technology companies in wealth management, loans, funds and other related businesses.

- Represented the multinational banks to handle major lawsuits under the jurisdiction of the Supreme People's Court of PRC and overseas litigations and arbitrations in North America, Europe and Hong Kong.

Representative Projects

- A well-known Financial Exchange: the project of opening up to the investors from multiple jurisdictions.

- A well-known international technology enterprise: blockchain platform expansion and metaverse development in China.

- A major European banking group: the project of establishing a consumer finance company in China.

- A Hong Kong Insurance company: investment in health care projects in Mainland China through the QFLP mechanism.

- Shengrong International Leasing Company: multiple auto finance mergers and acquisitions projects.

- Shanghai Baofu Payment Company: the project of overseas licenses extension and application.

- Wemeta PTE.LTD.: the project of Singapore MPI license application.

- A well-known international fund company: QFII investment project with amount of hundreds millions of U.S. dollars.

- Bank of China Shenzhen Branch: cross-border M&A loan project to a Chinese group company.

- Bank of China Shanghai Branch: cross-border financing project for a Chinese state-own company to acquire a foreign port.

- A foreign commercial bank: equity restructuring and entity transformation via regulatory approval.

- A financial holding company: dozens of special asset management and disposal projects.

- A large Chinese bank: treasury bond pledge loan project to a financial leasing company.

- A large Chinese bank: several capital investment and banking loan synergy projects.

- China Bohai Bank: the digitalization project of supply chain finance.

- A large Chinese company: large-scale cross-border M&A project in the logistics industry with amount of billions U.S. dollars.

- Lianlian Electronic Payment Company: establishment of the framework of compliance, risk control, data management and anti-money laundering for its global payment business.

- Standard Chartered Bank: the  global digital banking project, and global wealth management system restructuring project.

- Standard Chartered Bank (China) Ltd. : issuance of special financial bond to support small and medium-sized enterprises in China.

- Standard Chartered Bank (China) Ltd.: the launch of its credit card business in China.

- HSBC Life Insurance Co., Ltd.: the establishment of legal compliance, risk management and corporate governance functions of.

- HSBC Life Insurance Co., Ltd.: establishment of more than ten categories of insurance product lines, and relevant sales, marketing and operation processes.

- Bank of China: the establishment of the compliance policy and the implementation of the compliance risk framework of the.

- Bank of China: IPO project in both Shanghai and Hong Kong markets; and relevant shareholding reform and strategic investor negotiation.

Publications, presentations and articles

- "Practical Guidelines for Overall Compliance of Financial Institutions", April 2023, Baker McKenzie FenXun Law Joint Office;

- “Spirit of Hindu Law” (Translation work), November 2023, The Commercial Press;

- “The Evolution of Luhman’s Theory of Trust in Financial Law”, October 2023, Tsinghua Journal of Rule of Law, Volume 29, Tsinghua University Press;

- Editor- in- Chief, August 2018, Tsinghua Journal of Rule of Law, Volume 25, Tsinghua University Press;

- “Re-examination of the Illustration Obligations of Standard Terms: Taking the Recent Development of the Individual Financial related Legal Practices as Example”, Research on China-Germany Private Law (16), April 2018, Peking University Press;

- “Options of China's Financial Supervision Model”, February 2017, China Law Review, Law Press China;

- “Res Judicata as Requisite for Justice”, February 2015, Tsinghua Journal of Rule of Law, Volume 23, Tsinghua University Press;

- “Legal Risks and the Risk Control Method related with Banking Business”, June 2003, Peking University Legal Network;

- “The Civil Litigation Rate as an Indicator of Legal Culture”, “The Mystery of Legal Culture: Blackberg's Comments”, “Comparative Criminology of Criminologists: For Which Purpose to Compare?” (Translation work), June 2003, Comparative Legal Cultures, Tsinghua University Press.

Education and admission

- Tsinghua University, Ph.D. (2020)

- Tsinghua University, M.L. (2002)

- Peking University, B.A. (1999)

- Lawyer Qualification of P.R.C (2001)