Despite being initially slow in adopting fintech innovations as a means of enhancing their businesses and financial markets trading models, banks and other types of financial institutions based in Asia-Pacific (APAC) rapidly advanced their utilisation of the solutions in recent years in an effort to catch up with their competitors elsewhere in the world. In particular, the quasi-city state of Hong Kong, wherein the capital markets industry’s uptake of fintech solutions as a means of improving an already generally sophisticated baseline of electronified banking, lending and trading services is being bolstered by governmental efforts to create new fintech ecosystems designed to stand out not only in China, but also across APAC and globally. In this op-ed article, GreySpark Partners Senior Consultant Musheer Ahmed comments on the progress achieved to date in Hong Kong by the city’s government and local investment banks to incentivise the development and adoption of home-grown fintech solutions, and he outlines what the territory will need to achieve in the future in order to create a fintech ecosphere that could one day rival London and New York in its size and scope.
