Hong Kong is an international financial centre with a highly digitized economy. With world-class financial and technical infrastructures, robust regulatory environment, as well as rich business opportunities and funding support, we are the forerunner in embracing the emergence of Fintech. We are now home to over 800 Fintech companies and start-ups, including globally respected research centres and innovation laboratories, etc. Virtual banks, virtual insurers and virtual asset trading platform are also up and running in Hong Kong, offering a wide spectrum of innovative financial services to the community.
Our growing strength in financial services and close ties with markets in the Mainland and overseas will continue to make Hong Kong the ideal hub for Fintech development.
As an international financial centre, Hong Kong is an ideal place for Fintech business to grow. The Financial Services and the Treasury Bureau attaches great importance to Fintech development, and works closely with relevant Government departments, financial regulators and the industry to promote the development of Fintech sector through a variety of measures. Our work includes:
Building the Fintech ecosystem – We launched the Fintech Proof-of-Concept Subsidy Scheme for the first time in 2021 to encourage traditional financial institutions to partner with Fintech companies to conduct proof-of-concept projects on innovative financial services products. A total of 93 projects were approved. To promote continuous innovation of the financial industry, we launched another round in 2022 and approved 56 projects in total.
Nurturing Fintech talent – We launched two rounds of Financial Practitioners Fintech Training Programme in 2020 and 2022, with a view to enhancing financial practitioners’ knowledge of the practical application of Fintech, and promoting the digital transformation of financial services. The two-round programme attracted participation of around 7,200 financial practitioners.
Furthermore, to promote professional development of Fintech talents and expand the Fintech talent pool in Hong Kong, we have launched the Pilot Scheme on Training Subsidies for Fintech Practitioners. Under the scheme, Fintech practitioners who have successfully attained Fintech professional qualifications recognized under the Qualifications Framework will be eligible to claim reimbursement of the tuition fees. We are also conducting a consultancy study on developing Fintech professional qualifications for the securities and insurance sectors. Based on the outcome of the consultancy study, we will develop an applicable Fintech Qualifications Framework for practitioners in the securities and insurance sectors.
The 2023-24 Budget proposes to introduce a Fintech internship scheme for post-secondary students which aims at facilitating students studying in Fintech related subjects to acquire practical work experience in Fintech enterprises in Hong Kong and the Greater Bay Area, thus equipping them early with knowledge in pursuing a career in Fintech.
Improving Fintech infrastructure – Fintech infrastructure is one of the cornerstones supporting the development of Fintech in Hong Kong. We strive to enhance the Fintech infrastructure which underpins Fintech adoption in the areas of payment, cross-boundary settlement and application, as well as business financing. Since the launch of the Faster Payment System (FPS) in 2018, the usage of FPS has expanded from person-to-person transactions to merchant payments and top-up transactions, and add-on services for Web-to-app and App-to-app payments were successively launched which have facilitated development of electronic payments. Currently, more than 80% of the Government departments provide FPS service as a payment option, and more public services will accept FPS payment in the coming years to bring convenience to the public.
The Hong Kong Monetary Authority has been actively exploring new use cases and developing improvement measures to further boost the adoption of Commercial Data Interchange (CDI). The CDI will be linked to the Consented Data Exchange Gateway developed by the Government. This will facilitate introduction of more government data sources into the CDI, thereby allowing financial institutions access to more useful data. We will continue to explore expanding the functionality of CDI to enrich the data-driven financial service ecosystem.
Promoting Hong Kong’s advantages in Fintech – We continue to promote Hong Kong’s advantages in Fintech to attract Fintech companies and talents from other places to come to Hong Kong. For instance, the annual flagship event Hong Kong Fintech Week was held in hybrid mode in November 2021, comprising both virtual programmes and physical events. It attracted over 30,000 visitors and five million viewers from over 95 economies, featured over 500 distinguished speakers and over 600 sponsors and exhibitors, and attracted more than 30 international delegations.
We will continue with our concerted efforts to promote and support Fintech development on all fronts and take it to the next stage.
The Government issued a policy statement on the development of virtual assets (VA) in Hong Kong on 31 October 2022. The statement sets out the Government's policy stance and approach towards developing a vibrant sector and ecosystem for VA in Hong Kong. It explains in detail our vision and approach, regulatory regimes, thoughts on investors' exposures, our pilot projects to embrace the technological benefits and financial innovations brought by VA, and the way forward. Our policy stance on VA is now clearly communicated to the global markets and it serves to demonstrate our commitment and determination to explore financial innovations together with the global VA community. The Government is prepared to embrace the opportunities and challenges in the future, and we welcome the clustering of Fintech and VA community and talents in Hong Kong, and we will promote the sustainable development of financial services across the whole VA value chain.
For more information, please visit the following websites/linked documents:
Fintech HK - https://www.hongkong-fintech.hk/en/why-hong-kong/index.html
Hong Kong Monetary Authority -
https://www.hkma.gov.hk/eng/key-functions/international-financial-centre/fintech/
Insurance Authority -
https://www.ia.org.hk/en/aboutus/insurtech_corner.html