Financial Technology Conference

The Faculty of Engineering of The Chinese University of Hong Kong (CUHK) recently hosted the “2019 CUHK Conference on Financial Technology (FinTech)”, supported by the Centre for Financial Engineering (CFE) and CUHK Business School. The conference titled “When Wall Street Met Main Street – Real vs Virtual Economy” drew close to 500 industry practitioners, professors, researchers, government officials and regulators to explore the trends driving the explosive FinTech development, and future collaboration opportunities.

The forum was officiated at by Prof. Martin WONG, Dean of the Faculty of Engineering and Prof. Michael ZHANG Xiaoquan, Associate Dean for Innovation and Impact of CUHK Business School. Featured speakers including CUHK scholars, representatives from banking, technology, financial regulatory authorities and legal sectors were invited to give their insights on the applications and development of FinTech today. From the forum, Prof. WAI Hoi To, Assistant Professor, Department of Systems Engineering and Engineering Management of CUHK commented on the malicious agent detection in social network. In the midst of the increasingly popular open Application Programming Interface (API), Ms. Frankie TAM, Senior Associate, DLA Piper shared her view on its impact on new developments in the Hong Kong banking sector. Dr. Florian SPIEGL, Co-Founder & COO, FinFabrik pointed out that the new field of blockchain-based technologies and digital assets is emerging fast and starting to have a real impact on the capital markets sector.

Other guest speakers included Prof. CHEW See Meng, Associate Professor of Practice in Finance, Department of Finance, and Associate Director for MBA Programmes of CUHK Business School, Mr. Gilbert LEE, Head of Strategy/Planning and Chief of Staff, Hang Seng Bank Ltd, Mr. Zane MOI, Deputy General Manager and Head of Partner Ecosystem, Amazon Web Services, Mr. Jay CHAN, Solution Consultant, NICE Ltd, Mr. Galen LAW-KUN, Global Crypto Team, PwC, Mr. Daniel CHAN, Consultant, FORMS HK, and Mr. Eric CHOW, Head of Digital Channel & Delivery, Hang Seng Bank Ltd. The speeches covered a wide range of topics, including AI, biometrics, crypto assets, cybersecurity, decentralized finance, FinTech in banking, machine learning, new career opportunities, regulatory technology (RegTech) and tokenization. Other speakers also gave their views during the two panel discussion sessions entitled “The Ingredients of a FinTech Hub” and “FinTech Talents: Demand & Supply”.

Prof. CHEN Nan, Professor, Department of Systems Engineering and Engineering Management, Director of CFE and the Bachelor of Engineering programme in Financial Technology (BEng in FinTech) of CUHK, and Co-Chairman of the Conference’s Programme Committee said, “The applications of FinTech are pervasive in various kinds of sectors including economics, law and banking. An up-to-date understanding of FinTech is particularly important to keep abreast of the changing market trends and professional personnel training. 2019 marks the second anniversary of the BEng in FinTech launched by CUHK, the first ever FinTech undergraduate programme in Hong Kong. With this multi-disciplinary programme, CUHK is indeed spearheading the effort to supply talent to both academia and industry.”

Prof. CHAN Chun Kwong, Professor of Practice in FinTech, Department of Systems Engineering and Engineering Management, and Director of the Master of Science programme in FinTech (MSc FinTech) of CUHK commented, “This is the inauguration year of the MSc FinTech. With the talent in these programmes and the innovative ideas in the market, we see an all-win situation from building a bridge between the university and  industry. The interaction between the university and industry will definitely help to formulate strategies for fostering talent and promoting the development of FinTech education.”