Insight on London RMB center role

Since 2012, London has stepped up its game to compete with other world cities such as Hong Kong, Singapore or New York for the position as the world's yuan centre. The British capital has seen both business volumes and the number of yuan products provided by London-based banks increasing significantly.

According to a 2012 report from Bourse Consult of the City of London Corporation, import and export financing totalled about 33.6 billion yuan, up by 100 percent compared with 2011.

In the meantime, the volume of Letters of Credit and other loan guarantees jumped 13 times to 4.7 billion yuan in the same year. This was mainly thanks to strong growth in the use of the yuan by corporations following the extensive marketing push for yuan services by Britain-based banks.

Growth was also seen across the institutional and inter-bank market. Spot yuan trading volumes in London increased substantially to a daily value of 2.5 billion dollars, a 240 percent increase on 2011.