A detailed plan for the qualified domestic individual investor, or QDII2, trial will be released in May, a source told the Shanghai Securities News.

More discussions on the requirements for applicants will take place after the Spring Festival.

The QDII2 trial, expected to be in place at the beginning of the year, will allow mainland individual investors to trade Hong Kong stocks directly.

Senior brokers in Hong Kong pointed out that the introduction of the QDII2 scheme has to take into consideration the qualifications of applicants, the monitoring system of the cross-border cash flow, and cooperation with shareholders.

The QDII2 quota will be issued to overseas subsidiaries of Chinese securities traders, which will be allowed to allocate it to qualified individual direct investors.

Hong Kong brokers said the individuals, assets will probably need to reach a certain scale to be qualified.