Two former employees in the Asian city will never be allowed to work in financial services again, following action by the HK SFC.

A Hong Kong regulator has banned two former HSBC employees from the financial sector for life after they had been convicted and sentenced for fraud.

The Securities and Futures Commission yesterday said it has banned Chau Hang Yu and Steve Chow Chun Yin from re-entering the sector.

The District Court found that Chau and Chow, both of whom were responsible for selling and promoting investment products at HSBC and knew one another at the material times, made false claims in 2012 and 2014 that certain HSBC customers had agreed to subscribe for unit trust funds. They received sales commission after HSBC processed the subscription orders in the belief that they had sold the UTFs to the customers when in fact it was not the case.

The District Court also found that Chau referred her customers to Chow so that he could obtain more sales commission after she had reached the cap for receiving sales commission. Chau later asked Chow for customer referral fees. He gave her HK$100,000.

On 23 February 2016, Chau was sentenced to 12 months of imprisonment after her conviction for two counts of fraud under the Theft Ordinance. Chow was sentenced to 18 months of imprisonment after his conviction for two counts of fraud under the Theft Ordinance and one count of offering an advantage to an agent under the Prevention of Bribery Ordinance.