Fintech summit: young blood, fresh ideas are key to Hong Kong’s digital finance future, say industry leaders
- Financial Secretary Paul Chan said the city’s access to the Greater Bay Area provides a huge advantage for fintech companies
- Hong Kong is becoming a ‘Silicon Valley and Wall Street all in one’, HKEX boss tells Greater Bay Area Fintech Talent Summit
“The importance of connecting young people with fintech is obvious because digitalisation in the financial sector will continue to accelerate in the years to come,” said Howard Lee, deputy chief executive of the Hong Kong Monetary Authority (HKMA).
He made his comments during a keynote speech at the Greater Bay Area Fintech Talent Summit on Thursday.
More than 20 financial giants, including Goldman Sachs, HSBC, Citigroup and Hong Kong Exchanges and Clearing, which operates the local stock exchange, provide support to the initiative.
Financial Secretary Paul Chan Mo-po said the city’s access to the zone with its 87 million inhabitants provides a huge advantage for fintech companies.
“The GBA is a huge market for our fintech companies [and] will provide vast opportunities ranging from product development and distribution to asset management and surfaces,” said Chan, speaking at the event.
Hong Kong offers a business-friendly environment, Chan said, as well as the free flow of capital, making it a very attractive location for fintech companies.
The world’s top financial companies will have to be exposed to fintech, Chan added, as online payments become increasingly commonplace.
The use of online payment systems has seen a sharp increase in Hong Kong. The city saw its online retail sales reach HK$34.6 billion (US$4.41 billion) in 2022, up by about a fifth from the previous year, according to data from the Census and Statistics Department.
Nicholas Aguzin chief executive officer of HKEX, also attended the summit. In a panel discussion, he said Hong Kong is “creating an innovation cluster” and described it as a “Silicon Valley and Wall Street all in one.”
David Liao, co-chief executive at HSBC Asia-Pacific, said the bay area provides a “wealth of career opportunities.”
Hong Kong’s “one country, two systems” is a great strength, according to Liao, as it provides the best of both worlds – access to the world’s second-largest economy and the internationalism of Hong Kong’s finance centre.
The government has slowly introduced several talent schemes it hopes will tackle the so-called brain drain which has seen the local workforce shrink by about 140,000 between 2020 and 2022.
The government’s recent budget announcement included a scheme for secondary-school students aimed at helping them access fintech internships in technology companies. The initiative will work in tandem with other recent policies aiming to attract professionals and top university graduates.
Speaking during another panel discussion at Thursday’s summit, Jia Mao, co-head of core engineering in Asia-Pacific at Goldman Sachs, cited the benefits of blockchain technology in facilitating innovations that will support the transition towards clean energy, such as tokenised green bonds.
“Blockchain technology has potential, and is already starting to show us how it can basically transform the way financial transactions can be done more securely with more transparency, more efficiency and with lower costs,” she said.