The Pre-war Financial Records of the University of Hong Kong include correspondence, insurance files, salary records, mortgage records, university accounts, staff lists, university income and expenditure, and photographs. Budget estimates, student accounts, and banking files also exist in small numbers. The strength of the collection is found in the files on University Accounts. These files provide information on the university’s income and expenditure from mortgages to investments to salaries between the years 1911 (the university’s inception) and 1970.

Aside from general overview documents such as University Accounts, there are specific folders which contain specific documents which provide in-depth detail that would otherwise be absent in the University Accounts folders. These include mortgages, department specific expenditures with breakdowns, hall fees, investments, campus maintenance and budget estimates. The dates of these files are also between 1911 and 1970, although not every year has records – the majority concentrating on the pre-war years (before 1938). There is no particular order or specific arrangements with regards to the files in the boxes.