Welcome Address by Mr Kingsley Wong, Deputy Government Chief Information Officer, at the “Insights from Judges and Winners’ Sharing and Briefing Session of HKICTA 2024: FinTech Award” (with photos)

Paul (Mr Paul PONG, Founder & Chairman of Institute of Financial Technologists of Asia (IFTA)), distinguished speakers and guests, ladies and gentlemen,

Good afternoon! It is my great pleasure to welcome you all for joining this sharing and briefing Session for the Fintech Award of Hong Kong ICT Awards 2024.

The Fintech Award is one of the eight categories of the Hong Kong ICT Awards. Coming to its ninth edition, this round of Fintech Award is composed of three streams, namely “FinTech for Banking, Investment and Insurance”, “Emerging solutions for Virtual Assets, Payment, Blockchain and AI applications” and “RegTech for Regulatory and Risk Management”. In a bid to promote innovative use of artificial intelligence (AI), a new “Best Use of AI” award is introduced this year to recognise outstanding achievements in harnessing the power of AI in Fintech products and services. I would like to thank the Institute of Financial Technologists of Asia (IFTA) for hosting the Fintech Award as the leading organiser this year. I am sure IFTA will bring in new and positive vibes to make it another shining success.

The Fintech landscape in Hong Kong is very promising. Currently, there are about 1 000 Fintech companies operating in Hong Kong, including eight virtual banks, four virtual insurers and two licensed virtual assets trading platforms. Their scope of business covers mobile payment, cross-boundary wealth management, regulatory technology, etc. According to a recent market survey, Hong Kong ranked fourth in Asia and ninth in the world in terms of Fintech investment in 2023. It was the first time for Hong Kong to rank among the top 10 in the world.

The winners of our Fintech Awardees are equally promising. For example, our 2021 Grand Award winner, Wizpresso, won the “AI of the Year” award at the Asia Pacific Information and Communications Technology Alliance (APICTA) Awards last December with its AI-powered legal verification software that facilitates the due diligence process. Our 2023 Fintech Grand Award winner, KRIP Limited, also won the Award of the Year at the Hong Kong ICT Awards in the same year with its product – credit card deals platform. Their achievements obviously reflect the increasingly thriving Fintech industry in Hong Kong.

To foster Fintech development, the Government will continue to bolster the necessary digital infrastructure in Hong Kong. For example, we have recently secured $300 million to set up the business version of “iAM Smart” or what we call “CorpID”, to enable companies to go through corporate identity authentication and corporate signature verification in a secure, convenient and efficient manner when they conduct online business transactions with enterprises or government. With CorpID platform to be available by 2026, businesses can dispense with many complicated procedures. It is expected the new service can benefit around 1.8 million Hong Kong companies, and will support the operation of the Commercial Data Interchange (CDI) of the Hong Kong Monetary Authority, facilitating financial institutions in conducting customer due diligence.

The new “Best Use of AI” award to be introduced this year signifies the important role played by AI for developing the digital economy and the Fintech ecosystem. We are glad that Cyberport is actively establishing an AI supercomputing centre to meet the strong local demand of computing power for AI research and development (R&D). The facility is expected to progressively commence operation later this year. At the same time, the Government will allocate $3 billion to launch a three-year AI subsidy scheme to support local universities, R&D institutes, AI startups and strategic enterprises in leveraging the centre’s computing power to achieve scientific and application breakthroughs. We have full confidence that our R&D capabilities will be greatly enhanced with this important digital infrastructure, thus producing more and more innovative FinTech products and services for our economy.

Last but not least, I wish to thank the judges and past winners of the Hong Kong ICT Awards for their sharing today. I truly believe that their invaluable insights and advice will benefit all of us. Before closing, I appeal to everyone here to grasp the opportunity to enter the Fintech award category this year. Thank you.

- ENDS -