Hong Kong Monetary Authority (HKMA) Announces Collaboration With ASTRI To Set Up The “HKMA-ASTRI Fintech Innovation Hub” | ASTRI - Hong Kong Applied Science And Technology Research Institute Company Limited

In his opening remarks of the TMA Summit today, Chief Executive of the HKMA Mr. Normal T.L. Chan announced that it will collaborate with ASTRI to set up the “HKMA-ASTRI Fintech Innovation Hub” (the Fintech Innovation Hub).

Mr. Chan said, “First, I am pleased to announce that the HKMA will collaborate with the Applied Science and Technology Research Institute (ASTRI) to set up the “Fintech Innovation Hub”. It will be equipped with all necessary system and support resources to enable players of the banking and payment industry to conduct proof of concept trials of products and services through the use of new technologies, and do it safely – as this controlled environment is separated from their internal systems. Also, the Fintech Innovation Hub allows regulators to provide early inputs to the trial works before the actual implementation. While some of the largest banks have built their own laboratories, this new Fintech Innovation Hub will cater for the big and small institutions alike such that the industry as a whole would be able to adopt new technologies more speedily and in a more collaborative manner.

Among its potential uses, this Fintech Innovation Hub, as a neutral testing ground, will be ideal for two types of activities. First, industry players can test new Fintech solutions which involve the collaboration of multiple parties and are intended to be commonly adopted in the industry. A good example is biometric authentication. New concepts in various facial or voice recognition techniques could be demonstrated by the developers in the Fintech Innovation Hub to gather feedback from potential users and to receive regulatory guidance from supervisors at an early stage. This should help shorten the time-to-market of useful industry-wide solutions. Second, I envisage that the Fintech Innovation Hub will also benefit the HKMA. In this place, we could explore with innovators options and possibilities of using new technologies, such as Big Data Analytics and other “regtech” initiatives, to achieve our objectives more effectively without creating undue risks or burden for our internal systems or databases.”

ASTRI is now working closely with HKMA on finalising details of the set-up and the mode of operation of the Hub.

For more information and media coverage of the collaboration, please refer to the following:

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