(From left)Senior Manager, Fintech Unit, Intermediaries, Securities and Futures Commission Angela Wong; Associate Director, Policy and Development Division, Insurance Authority Tony Chan; Undersecretary for Financial Services and the Treasury Joseph Chan Ho-lim; Director-General of Investment Promotion, InvestHK Stephen Phillips; Head of Fintech, InvestHK King Leung; and Chief Fintech Officer, Hong Kong Monetary Authority Nelson Chow pose for a photo during the event announcing the details of of Hong Kong FinTech Week 2021 on Oct 20, 2021. (PHOTO / HKSAR GOVERNMENT)
Hong Kong is the destination of choice for startups aiming to scale up, Undersecretary for Financial Services and the Treasury Joseph Chan Ho-lim said Wednesday.
Chan made the remarks at the announcement of Hong Kong FinTech Week 2021 at InvestHK, the government department responsible for attracting and foreign direct investment.
Among the featured speakers at the Hong Kong FinTech Week 2021 is Governor of the People’s Bank of China Yi Gang
Scaling up is the theme of the sixth edition of the event scheduled from Monday through Friday next week at the Hong Kong Convention and Exhibition Centre in Wan Chai.
The main conference with the physical presence of attendees will be on Nov 3 and 4. Virtual sessions will take place on Nov 5.
Among the featured speakers is Governor of the People’s Bank of China Yi Gang.
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Hong Kong FinTech Week is organized by the Financial Services and the Treasury Bureau, and InvestHK. It is co-organized by the Hong Kong Monetary Authority, the Securities and Futures Commission, and the Insurance Authority.
Director-General of Investment Promotion at InvestHK Stephen Phillips emphasized the collaborative efforts of fintechs and regulators, to “showcase the fintech ecosystem’’ in Hong Kong.
King Leung, the head of fintech at InvestHK, said that between “a quarter and a third” of the 600 fintechs and startups in the SAR started in the city.
Many of the founders are former executives from the financial services sector, he said.
“It is hard to define where they [the fintechs] are from,” Leung said, considering that the companies could have teams in Hong Kong, but be domiciled elsewhere.
The 600-plus fintechs and startups include eight unicorns, valued at over US$1 billion. Among the unicorns are cross-border payments services provider Airwallex, online financial services company WeLab, and fintech TNG.
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Most fintechs in Hong Kong are in the business-to-business space. Startups in the city have increased to 3,755, InvestHK data shows.
AMTD Group Vice-chairman Frederic Lau said the company has developed a fintech platform for the Association of Southeast Asian Nations, reinforcing its role as a “super-connector” of resources and capital in the region.
Financial services conglomerate AMTD Group and AMTD Foundation partnered with the ASEAN Financial Innovation Network, the Monetary Authority of Singapore, the ASEAN Bankers Association, and the International Finance Corporation, to start an open-architecture API platform — the API Exchange in November 2018.
AMTD is the first corporate founding member of AFIN, and Calvin Choi, chairman and CEO of the AMTD Group and the founder of the AMTD Foundation, are on the board.
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“We try to promote banks to use the applications. But they don’t have the resources to ask a software company to develop apps for them,” Lau said.
“On the other hand, startups don’t have the ability to negotiate with banks. We created a platform to connect the two sides and built a catalog.”
