HK research grants body backs fintech
Boosting Hong Kong’s status as an international financial innovation hub, the academic research grants authority will start awarding official grants to financial technology research under the Themebased Research Scheme.
The Research Grants Council on Monday said it will include fintech in the scheme for the first time.
Moreover fintech and regulatory technologies, or regtech, will be officially added into the scheme’s category list next year. Applications in this field will be accepted on a regular basis under the finance and business category with the other three categories — health, environment and emerging industries.
Fintech aims to closely follow the city’s economic development trends and meet its new needs, explained Benjamin Wah Wan-sang, RGC chairman.
The project — contributing to the development of Hong Kong into a global fintech hub — will be awarded HK$18.6 million from the RGC.
Tam Kar-yan, project coordinator and dean of business and management at the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, said this will provide a roadmap for transforming Hong Kong into a global fintech hub.
It will also help assess the city’s ability to facilitate financial innovations and develop policy recommendations to sustain fintech development, he added.
Four local universities will jointly work on the project in the following four years. These are HKUST, the Chinese University of Hong Kong, City University of Hong Kong and University of Hong Kong, Tam said.
According to the project proposal, eight main research tasks will be tackled — including blockchain, cybersecurity, personalized risk assessment, robo-advising, applications of artificial intelligence or machine learning in multimodal analysis of financial disclosures and fintech manpower development.
After the project is completed, Tam said they will publish reports and give the government policy recommendations on specific issues. These will cover the regulatory environment, innovation pipeline, cooperation between incumbents and startups and recruitment and also the nurturing of fintech talents.
Tam said the project will benefit industry as case studies on fintech strategy and practice will be undertaken.
In recent years, the government has implemented new measures to promote fintech development. Last September, the Hong Kong Monetary Authority unveiled a number of initiatives, including virtual banking and Faster Payment System, to promote the city stepping into a new era of smart banking.
The RGC also announced it will fund four other research projects under the scheme. These cover an HIV functional cure, neurodegenerative diseases, sustainable marine infrastructure and automatic robotic surgery.
As well as fintech and regtech, two other new grandchallenge topics — food production and food security, and artificial intelligence — will be added in the next round of the scheme’s application.