The Hong Kong government appointed Julia Leung Fung-yee, a veteran financial regulator, as the first female chief executive of the Securities and Futures Commission (SFC), the regulator said Thursday.

She will also be the first local Chinese to take up the top job at the SFC since the regulator split the executive chairman’s role into CEO and chairman in 2006. Her two predecessors were from the U.K. Her term will be three years, starting Jan. 1, 2023.