UK retailers plump for renminbi

"Renminbi settlements allow businesses to trade with companies in China which have concerns of accepting an exchange risk, or finding that in order to mitigate that risk they could not offer a competitive price," Ford says.

China first allowed trials of cross-border renminbi trade settlements in Hong Kong, Macao and the Association of Southeast Asian Nations in July 2009. The program was extended to all countries in June last year, but most British retailers still trade with Chinese businesses using the US dollar or sterling.

"It naturally took time for some companies and their suppliers to understand what the changes meant for them in practice and to evolve their processes and strategies," Ford says.

"Other companies that (had) already signed contracts in dollar or sterling before the scheme was extended to include Britain may have waited until the conclusion of any outstanding contracts in other currencies before embarking on contracts priced in renminbi."

China's renminbi settlement in cross-border trade surged to 957.57 billion yuan ($151 billion, 113 billion euros) in the first half of this year, 13.3 times more than that for the corresponding period last year.

Although global banks such as Citigroup, Deutsche Bank AG, Standard Chartered and HSBC Holdings Plc have been rushing to offer renminbi settlement services, Chinese banks still dominate this market, and the Bank of China helped settle nearly 400 billion yuan worth of offshore renminbi trade settlements in the first half of this year.

In Britain not all banks have the international facility to help their clients settle offshore renminbi trades. "British importers currently with banks unable to provide this service may eventually leave for other banks to take advantage of this opportunity," a spokesperson for HSBC says.

Richard Challinor, regional head of corporate sales at Standard Chartered, says large companies have integrated systems and have spent time streamlining processes, and it requires a lot of internal change to switch completely from US dollar or sterling payments to the renminbi.

"They tend to have pilot tests where perhaps one subsidiary in China or Hong Kong and one subsidiary in the UK switch to the new payment method to test the trade flow and ensure that it works before expanding the method on a wider scale."

But offshore renminbi settlements still face a number of challenges, says Stephen Gallo, head of market analysis at London-based financial service provider Schneider Foreign Exchange.

"One of them is pricing, as neither the non-deliverable forward market nor the offshore renminbi market in Hong Kong are perfect substitutes for the onshore renminbi price, meaning that costs could still deviate from whatever the contracted price is in these two markets."

Another complication relates to the size or liquidity of the renminbi market, which is still quite small.

"This means that the desired price may not equate to the actual price received when hedging," Gallo says. "Moreover, the small size of the market sets limits on how much can be transacted at one time."

Ford says China's rising importance as a global trading partner for Britain means more and more sectors are looking to trade with China. "The trend is only heading in one direction."