At the opening plenary of Hong Kong FinTech Week 2025, policymakers and industry practitioners converged around a clear message: AI and regulation are merging to redefine Asia’s fintech future. The key message came from Lu Lei, deputy governor of the People’s Bank of China (PBoC), who unveiled a national framework linking artificial intelligence (AI) with the financial system’s structural reform. The “AI + Finance” initiative, he said, is not a single project but a blueprint for integrating digital intelligence into the entire financial infrastructure.

The PBoC’s goals are threefold: to increase efficiency, strengthen governance and expand financial inclusion, all under firm regulatory governance. Crucially, the speech also marked a turning point in how mainland authorities articulate cooperation with Hong Kong: not simply as a funding or listing hub, but as a testing ground for AI-based and data-driven financial innovation.

Hong Kong’s renewed fintech positioning

Chief executive John Lee Ka-chiu opened the conference by reaffirming Hong Kong’s role as a global and regional financial centre. He highlighted recent indicators of resilience: the city ranked third globally and first in Asia in the Global Financial Centres Index, and its fintech ecosystem grew to 1,200 companies, up 10% year-on-year.

“Hong Kong has made remarkable strides as a global fintech and startup powerhouse,” he said, noting the city’s fintech revenues could surpass $600 billion by 2032, growing at 28% annually. He also highlighted that Hong Kong now ranks third worldwide for FDI inflows, and that the Shenzhen–Hong Kong–Guangzhou cluster was recognised as the world’s top innovation region.

Lee’s key message was a dual agenda: to reinforce traditional financial strengths while embedding technology and innovation across capital markets. He announced measures to attract more listings from mainland and overseas technology firms, strengthen bond market connectivity, and expand Renminbi settlement infrastructure.

The government’s “Project Ensemble” and supervisory sandbox were presented as practical examples of Hong Kong’s policy-led innovation model of using experimentation within defined regulatory parameters. He also mentioned planned incentives for family offices and fund structures, aligning capital markets with Hong Kong’s role as a “super-connector” between China and global investors.

By framing Hong Kong as a strategic complement to China’s financial modernisation under “one country, two systems,” Lee effectively set the stage for Lu Lei’s more systemic vision of reform.

China’s strategic intent

Lu’s keynote redefined AI’s role in finance. Rather than viewing it as a peripheral technology, he described AI as a production factor — akin to labour or capital — capable of transforming how financial institutions operate.

Advanced AI systems capable of reasoning and dialogue could become the “intelligent brain” of financial institutions, Lu argued, capable of driving new efficiencies and decision-making models. “Our aim is to explore and expand the financial production possibility frontier — to use AI to provide existing financial services at lower cost or to create products that did not previously exist,” he said.

He framed AI not merely as automation but as a driver of structural redesign, while decision-making, pricing and risk management are dynamically optimised.

Lu also elevated data as a core economic input, citing the PBoC’s pilot for “financial data elements” which integrates multi-dimensional datasets across banks and insurers to enable more panoramic insights into markets and users.

“To release the potential of financial data elements, the People’s Bank of China has launched pilot programmes encouraging institutions to conduct correlation analysis and in-depth use of large, multidimensional datasets for panoramic insight into markets and users,” he said.  This aligns with Beijing’s broader Data Security Management Measures and new cross-border data-flow guidelines, intended to establish a compliant infrastructure for sharing data across financial institutions.

Regional cooperation and infrastructure integration

Lu announced a closer cooperation framework between the PBoC, Hong Kong Monetary Authority (HKMA), and Macau Monetary Authority, linking their regulatory sandboxes for cross-border fintech testing. This interconnection allows AI- and data-driven financial products to be trialled under joint supervision — a step closer to creating a federated innovation network in Greater China.

He highlighted Hong Kong’s growing participation in infrastructure integration. The Cross-Border Interbank Payment System (CIPS) now includes 11 direct and 120 indirect Hong Kong participants. In addition, a unified QR code payment gateway linking UnionPay, Alipay and WeChat Pay simplifies retail payments across the Greater Bay Area. Meanwhile, the Cross-Border Payment Connect platform, launched mid-2025, supports real-time RMB remittances between the mainland and Hong Kong.

“A number of cross-border fintech innovation pilot projects have been launched, guiding institutions to use AI and big data to improve the availability and convenience of financial services for residents in both places,” Lu said.

Digital currency integration and cross-border settlement

Lu reaffirmed China’s commitment to central bank digital currency (CBDC) development. “China was among the earliest countries to begin developing legal digital currency, and has accumulated rich experience in design, technology, and application.” Said Lu.

The m-CBDC Bridge, a joint project led by the PBoC and HKMA, remains the prototype for multi-currency blockchain settlement among participating central banks. He added that Hong Kong’s FPS system is now connected to the digital RMB cross-border platform, enabling local residents to use the digital yuan for retail transactions. This integration represents further progress towards connecting payment systems across different jurisdictions as part of China’s fintech reform strategy. It aims to make cross-border transactions more seamless and efficient, supporting greater financial connectivity between markets.

Recasting Hong Kong’s role in the evolution of China’s fintech model

Lu framed Hong Kong as both executor and exporter of China’s fintech model. Its legal and market systems provide the institutional trust to implement and internationalise AI-driven reforms. This positioning shifts Hong Kong from a passive conduit of Chinese capital to an active collaborator in systemic financial experimentation. “We will also strengthen exchanges with central banks and international institutions, share China’s fintech story, and learn from global best practices.” Lu concluded.

The panel following Lu’s keynote translated the policy to implementation. Christopher Hui, Secretary for Financial Services and the Treasury; Eric Jing, Chairman of Ant Group; and Fred Hu, Chairman and CEO of Primavera Capital represented three pillars of Hong Kong’s financial architecture: regulation, industry and capital. Their exchange revolved around how AI and blockchain could move from pilot projects to systemic adoption.

Christopher Hui on regulatory coordination

Christopher Hui, Secretary for Financial Services and the Treasury described fintech growth through three lenses — market, corporate and consumer. At the market level, he said tokenisation and blockchain settlement are improving efficiency. At the corporate level, 75% of Hong Kong asset managers have already adopted or tested generative AI, a figure expected to rise sharply.

“Innovation should be systematic, measurable, and guided by compliance, not market hype,” Hui said. He outlined the government’s Digital Asset Policy Statement 2.0, structured around the acronym L-E-A-T: “legal compliance,” ensuring new digital products align with financial laws; “expansion,” widening the scope of permissible tokenised assets; “advancement,” promoting commercial pilots via Cyberport (Hong Kong’s government-backed innovation hub for digital and fintech enterprises) and “talent,” building local expertise in AI and blockchain.

Hui cited blockchain-based projects in maritime leasing income and blockchain-based credit card settlement that have reduced settlement time from 72 hours to under 10, and  decentralised identity (DID) experiments for event ticketing.

Eric Jing: from experimentation to production

Ant Group Chairman Eric Jing echoed the PBoC’s vision of “AI + Finance,” emphasising that AI should operate within supervised frameworks. “AI in finance is not just about enhancing the back office; it’s about transforming customer-facing services, making them more efficient and user-friendly,” Jing said. He noted the use of AI agents within Ant’s risk and compliance systems, enabling granular, adaptive monitoring of financial behaviour.

Jing further cited Project Ensemble, a joint initiative with the HKMA that achieved real-time cross-bank settlement using tokenised assets, as evidence that innovation and compliance can progress together. He identified four preconditions for sustainable fintech growth: regulatory partnership, practical use cases, cross-sector collaboration and governance discipline.

Finally, he linked Hong Kong’s fintech ecosystem to Chinese companies’ “Go Global” ambitions, arguing that the city’s infrastructure, regulation and talent make it a natural launchpad for Chinese enterprises to internationalise their financial operations.

Fred Hu: investment outlook and the data constraint

Fred Hu, chairman of Primavera Capital, supported the view that AI will reshape finance end-to-end, from wealth management to risk control, but also warned that data fragmentation is the biggest constraint on its potential.

He identified three investment frontiers: “AI-driven wealth management,” addressing the region’s growing mass-affluent market; “green finance,” where AI can refine risk assessment and support decarbonisation projects and “cross-border payments,” where AI can reduce friction in B2B and retail transfers.

Hu argued that Hong Kong’s openness and its link to the mainland position it as a laboratory for secure cross-border data sharing. “If data cannot be put together, how could they offer personalised service customisation?” he asked.

He cautioned that excessive localisation of data could cap the value of AI by preventing its access to large, integrated datasets. However, if Hong Kong and mainland China can demonstrate inter-regional data connectivity that balances privacy and openness, he said, it would set a global benchmark for AI-era financial regulation.

The plenary signalled a strategic shift in how Beijing and Hong Kong conceptualise fintech: from product innovation to system architecture. Discussion moved beyond payments and blockchain to AI as the organising principle of modern finance.

The PBoC’s “AI + Finance” strategy thus marks the institutionalisation of fintech, embedding technology into the governance of finance itself. Its success will depend on how effectively regulators, infrastructure providers and market participants coordinate across jurisdictions.

For Hong Kong, the task is trusted execution — embedding AI systems that meet global standards of compliance and transparency. The dialogue among Hui, Jing and Hu underlined that fintech’s next phase is institutional, not experimental. Hong Kong’s role is to translate China’s innovation policy into globally recognised norms, acting as the interface between domestic reform and international practice.