Being one of the global financial hubs, Hong Kong is also one of the leading and earliest fintech birthplaces, with a good mix of finance and technology talents. Many years into the fintech development, financial technologies nowadays not only disrupt the status quo and challenge the incumbents, but also collaborating and integrating with the greater ecosystem in bringing better, more and personalised offerings to the markets and customers. Diving into the fintech arena at this occasion:
Our Speakers
Cities like Hong Kong are rapidly evolving, driven by governments, talents in the cities and more and more importantly, technology. Where does the future of Hong Kong as a global city look like in the future? How will technology and innovation reshape the way Hong Kong is structured? Joining us with the insightful dialogue about our paveway to revive Hong Kong with energy, technology and future-proof city map. Asia is home to some 15 million High-Net-Worth Individuals (HNWIs), with an anticipated highest growth globally by 2024, at a rate of 39%. Nearly half of them are located in mainland China. Hong Kong has long been the capital management hub for the onshore and offshore wealthy. In the meantime, emerging HNWIs and retail investors are adopting digital services and more motivated to preserve their wealth during the inflation cycle. With Hong Kong’s growing fintech capabilities and the GBA Cross-boundary Wealth Management Connect Scheme launched late last year, how does AI and big data analytics enable the growth of WealthTech? SMEs and early-stage startups have always been underbanked, being the least favourite group of customers to be served by traditional banks. With the low-interest-rate era coming to an end, together with the rising business uncertainties, the financing for this group of businesses is expected to be even more challenging. How can SMEs and startups be financed to further their growth and expansion, or merely to survive through the post-covid transition? At today’s panel, we will look into the alternative channels in this regard. It is forecasted that by 2024, less than 1.6% of point-of-sale transactions in Hong Kong will be made via paper money and coins, going down from a 9% before the pandemic. It will turn Hong Kong into the most-cashless society in APAC. The pandemic, government incentives, extremely-high mobile and internet penetration rates and the well-established financial infrastructure all laid the foundation for digital currency. How will technology facilitate the transition and what are the ultimate challenges in cultivating a cashless Hong Kong? Along the rise of digital asset ownership around the world, we also witness a rising trend of related cybersecurity threats and crimes targeting the digital assets. While platforms are enhancing their security to fight against the trend, how digital asset owner can take proactive action in safeguarding the digital investments? The offering of digital asset insurance offers additional protection for investors and significantly lowers the risk born by both investors and digital asset platforms. With the presence of Asia-first digital asset insurance, how does that transform the crypto asset markets? Virtual banks first debuted in Hong Kong in 2020. Two and a half years have passed, the eight authorized virtual-only banks have taken up at least HKD 15.8 billion (USD 2.03 billion) deposits with a growing customer adoption and transition towards their no-branch offerings. The customers’ initial hesitations on security, infrastructure and data privacy seems to be alleviated. Meanwhile, brick-and-mortar banks are digitizing their services in the hope of retaining, if not gaining, their market share. What is the future of the Hong Kong banking ecosystem? Where is the sweet spot between the incumbent and uprising? The insurance industry operations and customer relations are very people-centric in Hong Kong. How insurtech is disrupting the practices and digitalising the experience? Beyond the traditional offerings of life and medical insurance, how technology is empowering insurtech to cover the happenings in the digital world? Programme
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We are committed to protecting your privacy. We will never collect information about you without your explicit consent.
We are committed to protecting your privacy. We will never collect information about you without your explicit consent.
Michelle is a pioneer and leader in business innovation and marketing across multiple industry sectors. A believer in ecosystem partnership, customer centricity and technology enabled marketing, Michelle recently established The Phygital, a consultancy firm specialized in phygital business transformation & web3 business advisory. Alongside her leadership role in the new venture, Michelle is also the InsurTech Committee Co-Chair of FinTech Association of Hong Kong (FTAHK). Michelle has over 20 years of Product, Marketing and Business Innovation experience in both Telecom, Customer Loyalty and Financial Service industry, with exposure in both local and international market. Michelle served as Director of Marketing, Business Development and Innovation at Livi Bank since Sept 2020. Before livi Bank, she had been with FWD Insurance overseeing the Alternative Distribution Business in HK. Before entering into the financial industry, Michelle have been with Hong Kong Applied Science and Technology Research Institute (ASTRI), Hong Kong Telecom (Group Loyalty Business, SVF Payment Business), Huawei Technology & Nokia Siemens Network, etc, taken up leadership roles in marketing, product and business development areas.
Howard Kwong has more than 19 years of experience in information technology and digital transformation for Fortune 500 as well as entrepreneurship in America and Asia. Howard is the Chief Digital Officer at Prudential Hong Kong, responsible for the overall digital and technology strategy, to transform Prudential to a digital enterprise and foster widespread innovation. Prior to Prudential, Howard led innovation transformation for large enterprises in Hong Kong and Taiwan as part of the professional services team at Amazon Web Services. Prior to Amazon, Howard played a number of senior leadership roles at homegrown startups in Hong Kong across different industries: COO at Stakk, a leading millennial-focused video content and product platform in Hong Kong. CTO at Delivery Republic, the online-to-offline service provider that operates the biggest delivery network coverage in Hong Kong and CTO at Handheld Culture, a popular e-commerce platform for Chinese-language ebooks. Howard was the Assistant Director of Technology for SCMP Group where he led the technology and business transform to push the publisher of South China Morning Post into the digital-native and mobile-first era.
Gary is a Partner in the Risk Assurance practice of PwC Hong Kong with specialisation in the banking and financial services sector. He has extensive professional experience in the provision of assurance and advisory services to Hong Kong, Chinese and international financial services clients. Gary’s areas of expertise and experience include business process and application controls, IT systems implementation, cyber security and data protection, operations and technology outsourcing, regulatory compliance and reporting, testing management, due diligence and process integration, business continuity and resilience management, data management and analytics, investigations, C-SOX/US-SOX, deposit protection, FATCA/CRS, IAS39/IFRS9, and BASEL regulatory framework, etc. Gary is a Practising Certified Public Accountant (CPA (Practising)) in Hong Kong. He actively involves in professional organisations and has a number of professional qualifications such as Fellow member of the Association of Chartered Certified Accountants (FCCA), Certified Information System Auditor (CISA), Certified Information Systems Security Professional (CISSP) and Financial Risk Manager (FRM). He is also a regular speaker at industry seminars and training events.
Mr Leo Ng is the first Chief Digital Officer of MTR Corporation, joining in May 2022. His charter has corporate oversight on digitalisation strategies and development together with his Global Innovation and Information Technology Services teams. He has more than 30 years of experience in consulting, program management, large-scale digital transformation program and technology architecture design and implementation for a wide range of companies across different industries in Australia, UK, ASEAN, and Greater China. Prior to joining MTR, he held various roles with Accenture in Greater China including being their Digital Lead, Technology Delivery Lead and HK Office Managing Director.
Winston Yung is the Managing Partner of McKinsey’s Hong Kong office. He focuses on serving financial institutions across Greater China on a broad range of issues including strategy, performance management, risk management, and corporate finance. Prior to joining McKinsey, Mr. Yung was the CFO of HTC and Shin Kong Financial Holding, has extensive experience as a senior executive, and was elected as “Best CFO” by Institutional Investor in 2011. Mr. Yung graduated from the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania with double majors in Finance and Accounting and was awarded the Palmer Scholar.
Nick has been a transaction banker for the past 18 years, in roles ranging from sales, strategy, regional product & country management. In his current HK-based role as Payments Product Head for HSBC Asia, he is fortunate to have significant exposure to clients, regulators, industry bodies, technology firms and most importantly, great people! Since the start of 2021, he also serves as the chairperson of the Hong Kong SWIFT National Member Group, and is active in several other industry associations. He is passionate about all things payments and blockchain, this complements his natural curiosity. He deems it a privilege to be in this exciting intersection of ideas, technology and innovation, whilst leading a talented group of product managers & advisors. Nick is driven by solving client and industry problems, typically by pairing in-depth use cases with the orchestration of suitable technologies. Industry awards for solutions crafted by his team, are testament to this approach. He holds a Bachelor of Information Systems from the University of Melbourne, a Certificate in International Cash Management from the Association of Corporate Treasurers UK, and various other Web 3 certifications.
Daniel is an Adviser and Solution Architect at the Bank for International Settlements (BIS) Innovation Hub where he builds technology solutions for the central banking community with a special focus on blockchain and CBDC. Before the BIS he led the digital currency work at R3, was a software engineer and a technical educator. He started his career as an Infantry Combat Commander in the Israeli army and received an honours degree in Computer Science and Mathematics from the University of Toronto.
Charles d’Haussy is Asia Managing Director at ConsenSys, a leading blockchain engineering company. Among his responsibilities, he leads ConsenSys’ projects on central-bank digital currencies with Hong Kong Monetary Authority and Bank of Thailand. Prior to this, Charles served as head of fintech with the Hong Kong government (InvestHK). In that capacity he helped found and scale Hong Kong Fintech Week, and supported the growth of over 450 fintech companies. He has 15 years of prior experience in Hong Kong’s private sector and is licensed to invest and deal in securities. In 2018, Charles was elected as a Top-50 fintech influencer in Asia. In 2021 he published Block Kong, a book about Blockchain leaders shaping the Hong Kong blockchain ecosystem. He studied in France at Rennes International Business School and in Guangzhou, China at Sun Yat Sen University. He is a certified Bitcoin professional and studied blockchain business strategy at Be9 London. Follow Charles : http://www.charlesdhaussy.com http://www.twitter.com/charlesdhaussy https://www.linkedin.com/in/charlesdhaussy/
Alex Ypsilanti spearheads Quantifeed’s mission to solve the challenges of digital wealth management. Before co-founding Quantifeed, he spent fifteen years as an investment banking research analyst. His work enabled investors to improve their risk-adjusted returns and to gain access to a wider range of market strategies and risk premia. Alex, a top ranked analyst by Institutional Investor, had a leading role in the growth of the European ETF market, hedge fund replication and the use of volatility products in portfolios. A former managing director for Morgan Stanley and Bank of America Merrill Lynch, Alex has built and led teams of derivatives and quantitative strategists in London, Tokyo and Hong Kong. Alex holds Bachelors and Masters degrees in Information Systems Engineering and a PhD in Mathematical Finance from Imperial College, University of London.
Mingles Tsoi is currently the CXO (Chief eXploration Officer) of ParticleX, an early stage to Pre-A round institutional investment fund aiming at startups with hands-on technology initiative, proven customer-problem-fit and problem-solution-fit achievements. His leadership in providing unique post-investment support services has gained much reputation from the portfolio companies. Mingles was an entrepreneur owning his own consultancy company since 1997. He is also a pioneer in startup education. He had been working with the CUHK Center for Entrepreneurship as Project Director since 2007. Some of his major accomplishments including the “Hong Kong Social Enterprise Challenge", the first CU Alumni Entrepreneur Census to investigate the success factors of leading entrepreneurs from local university education and the Google’s Empowering Young Entrepreneur (EYE) Program. He was invited to join KPMG China as the Director since 2015, to set up the Innovation and Startup Centre in Beijing. Mingles is also enthusiastic in youth development. He contributes his experience and knowledge in providing voluntary mentoring and business training services to various non-profit organizations. He was the Co-opted Members of the Working Group of Youth Development Fund of the Commission on Youth, and as Non-official Member of the Social Enterprise Advisory Committee respectively. He is currently serving on several boards and committees, including Hong Kong Business Angel Network (HKBAN), Cyberport Investors Network (CIN), DIT Committee of the Hong Kong General Chamber of Commerce, Vice Chairman of the Startup Council, Executive Committee Members of HKITIC and HKPSC of the Federation of Hong Kong Industries (FHKI), Member of Product & Technology Development Panel of the Hong Kong Medical and Healthcare Device Industries Association Limited (HKMHDIA), Founding and Council Member of the Lions Club HK IFC, and the Chairman of the Academic and Accreditation Advisory Committee of the Institute of Financial Technologists of Asia (IFTA). He is a CFT® holder, a GCDF, and fellow members of accountancy qualifications of IFA, IPA and CMA.
As the Head of Fintech at InvestHK, the department of the Hong Kong SAR Government responsible for attracting Foreign Direct Investment, King’s mission is to enrich the fintech ecosystem and contribute to the innovation of the financial services sector in Hong Kong. King achieves this goal through partnerships with fintech stakeholders – regulators, financial institutions, investors, fintech companies, associations, etc. in Hong Kong, the Greater Bay Area, and other major international fintech hubs. Prior to joining the government, King had a diverse private sector background as a serial tech entrepreneur, angel investor, and fintech lecturer in Asia where his first data-related start-upwas established through seed investment from Credit Suisse. King was a management consultant at Booz Allen & Hamilton and KPMG in the US, as well as a venture capitalist at Innovate@, a technology fund jointly run by Booz Allen & Hamilton and Lehman Brothers. King received his MBA (honors) from the University of Chicago and BSc (honors) from the University of Wisconsin – Madison.
Benedict is a Senior Director at Accenture, specialized in financial services. He is a core member of Accenture’s banking practice in Hong Kong. Benedict has been advising financial clients on commercializing new digital and technology and have helped them to rationalize the business models. He has strong interest in financial technology and a digital first generation. Possesses with strong business acumen, coupled with extensive network and experience in financial technology and business development, Benedict is known for his ability to establish businesses from inception to execution, with proven success in Mainland China, Hong Kong, Japan, and UK. Benedict received his MBA from Australian Graduation School of Management, University of New South Wales
Worked at JP Morgan and Dresdner Kleinwort Wasserstein in London as an Equity Derivatives trader. He then joined Bank of America London as a Managing Director and co-head of the Equity Derivatives Trading team. In 2008 Vittorio moved to Hong Kong where he has been the Head of Equity Derivatives Brokerage at Louis Capital Markets.
Daren is a co-founder of Reap. He spends most of his time on realizing Reap’s product roadmap and leading innovation at the company. Before Reap, he was the first member of Stripe’s Growth team in San Francisco, helped scale the company from 90 to 1500+ employees and led their Growth team in SE Asia and Hong Kong.Daren holds a Bachelor of Commerce from the University of Toronto. He enjoys podcasting and most forms of sports and looks for opportunities where you can combine both.
Lewis is the VP of Product at Choco Up, focusing on data and financing technologies. He is also a finance turned serial entrepreneur in tech. He co-founded two startups in mobile eCommerce and SaaS respectively previously. Right now, he is an active member of Choco Up, determined to drive the development of products. Prior to startups, he started his career in structured finance at a top Japanese MNC in Tokyo, with investment experiences in energy & solar power. After that, he joined a corporate development team of a Pre-IPO mobile game startup at its Tokyo & Beijing office.
Arthur is a Partner based in McKinsey’s Hong Kong Office, and co-lead’s McKinsey’s work on fintech in Asia and China. Arthur’s clients include traditional financial institutions, private equity and fintech investors, as well as internet platform companies and fintech attackers. Arthur holds a BA in Economics from the University of Cambridge.
Becky Tam is the General Manager of OneInfinity by OneDegree. OneDegree Hong Kong Limited, a new generation of InsurTech company that leverages technology and innovation to make insurance accessible and easy. As a key team member of the pioneering insurance startup, she began her role as the Chief Risk Officer for two years. Afterwards she led and established a new line of business, digital asset insurance, OneInfinity by OneDegree, which makes OneDegree the first insurer in Asia offering such product backed by Munich Re. Apart from being a crypto-enthusiast herself, she is a risk management specialist with deep experience in the insurance field and beyond. Prior to joining OneDegree, Becky was the Asia Risk Director of Sun Life Financial, and the Operational Risk Vice President of Swiss Re Asia. Her earlier experience with PwC focused on insurance and asset management companies. Becky is currently a member of the Environment and Conservation Fund Investment Committee. She is also a HKICPA member and CFA Charterholder.
Yvonne is currently the Director of Customer Transformation & Growth of Bupa Hong Kong and ex-Chief Marketing Officer and founding leader of AlipayHK. She is a well-known marketer and change leader in Fintech industry, a Chartered Marketer and Fellow Member (FCIM) of Chartered Institute of Marketing (UK) and a winner for Distinguished Marketing Leadership of HKMA/TVB Marketing Excellence Awards 2020. Yvonne has extensive experience in analytics-based performance marketing, creative/ service design, experience-driven innovations, digital transformation, public & media relations, and corporate events, dedicate to integrate strategic thinking and practical business applications through creating human-centered user experience; while continually build game changing solutions to maximize business values and brand equity. She holds a Bachelor of Commerce degree in Finance (First Class Hons & Dean’s List Award), a Master of Arts degree in Communication, a Master of Business Administration degree in Strategic Management, and a Doctor of Business Administration degree with research focus in Digital Marketing. She has also completed Digital Disruption: Digital Transformation Strategies Program of University of Cambridge, Customer-Focused Innovation Program at Stanford University, and Executive Program for Leading Change at HKUST.
Tim is currently focused on delivering fantastic digital experiences at Cathay Pacific. He is fascinated about network effects of digital platforms and extremely passionate about solving customer painpoints. Prior to this he has mix of both corporate and start-up experience; where he co-founded one of the first central bank licensed crypto-fiat exchanges in SE Asia, before becoming Chief Product Officer of PayMe, Hong Kong’s most popular social payment app.