Launching a market-access product under a hard regulatory deadline

The problem

Stock Connect was a first-of-its-kind trading link between the Hong Kong and Shanghai exchanges, opening Northbound access to Chinese A-shares for international investors. The go-live date was set by the exchanges, not negotiable, and the product had to work correctly for every client segment from day one — there was no soft launch, no beta, no room to patch a missed requirement after the fact.

The approach

• Relocated to Hong Kong specifically to lead the product from the client-facing platform side, working the requirement set against exchange rules that were still being finalized in parallel.
• Coordinated directly with regulators, legal, and exchange counterparts to translate rapidly evolving cross-border trading rules (quota mechanics, settlement timing, eligible securities) into concrete product requirements.
• Ran the requirement set against engineering and operations in lockstep, rather than sequentially, so build and compliance sign-off could move at the same pace instead of blocking each other.
• Prioritized ruthlessly against the fixed go-live date — anything that wasn't required for a compliant, working day-one launch was deferred, not built.

The outcome

• Shipped on the exchange's go-live date, with the product compliant against a rule set that was still being finalized weeks before launch.
• Set the template for how the team approached the next cross-border product launches: requirements and engineering run in parallel against a fixed external deadline, not sequentially.