(Bloomberg) -- FWD Group Holdings Ltd., the Asian insurer backed by billionaire Richard Li, has decided to postpone its Hong Kong initial public offering due to market volatility, according to people familiar with the matter.

The company could resume its listing plans when market conditions become favorable again, said the people, who asked not to be identified as the information is private. FWD this month won approval for its Hong Kong IPO but hadn’t decided when to launch the share sale, Bloomberg News has reported. The insurer was seeking to raise about $1 billion, people familiar with the matter have said.

A representative for FWD declined to comment.

New share sales in Hong Kong almost entirely vanished in May, when only one IPO raised almost $139 million. Listings slowed down in the city and other traditional venues as woes tied to rising inflation, hawkish central banks and the war in Ukraine impacted IPOs globally. Companies have raised about $2.2 billion through first-time share sales in Hong Kong so far this year, a slump from $24.4 billion from the same period in 2021, according to data compiled by Bloomberg.

Read more: May Hasn’t Been This Bad for Hong Kong IPO Proceeds in a Decade

FWD filed an application for the first-time share sale in February after deciding to switch its listing venue to Hong Kong from the US, where it had filed for an IPO that could have raised as much as $3 billion. The plan hit a snag amid US regulators’ increasing unease over the long arm of the Chinese government, after a post-IPO probe of Didi Global Inc. kicked off a wide-ranging crackdown on firms listing overseas.

Morgan Stanley, Goldman Sachs Group Inc., China Merchants Bank International and JPMorgan Chase & Co. are the joint sponsors of the Hong Kong IPO, according to a preliminary prospectus. FWD’s value of new business rose 11% to $686 million in 2021, the filing shows.

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