On November 7th 2023, the 2023 International Financial Technology Forum and the 7th Annual Lun Fintech Roundtable was successfully held in Hong Kong Cyberport. The forum was hosted by Lun Partners Group and co-organized by the Hong Kong Financial Services Institute, FISF and VSFC. Charles Chang, Deputy Dean of Academics, Professor in Finance and Director of Fintech Research Center at FISF, together with the team members of FISF Fintech Research Center, attended the forum. Professor Charles Chang gave a keynote speech, and Dr. Zhenhua Wang, Deputy Director of FISF Fintech Research Center, participated in the roundtable.

Mr. Diyu Yan, Fintech Director of Hong Kong Cyberport, and Mr. Xizhou Jiang, Chief Supervisor of Shanghai Financial Association, were present and gave speeches. Mr. Jiali Lin, Former President of Hong Kong Cyberport and Honorary Chairman of VSFC, posted a video speech. Mr. Yimin Zhang, Dean of Hong Kong Financial Services Institute representing of the co-organizer, and Mr. Peilun Li, Director of Lun Partners Group representing the host, delivered the opening speech.

The theme of the forum this year was “Digital Finance Empowering the Greater Bay Area, New Pathways for International Expansion.” Experts, scholars and entrepreneurs from all over the world shared and exchanged their industrial insights, innovation achievements and future application and development trends of financial technology utilizing keynote speeches and roundtable discussions. The forum invited experts, scholars and entrepreneurs from different countries and regions like Africa, Japan, Macao (China), Hong Kong (China) and Mainland China to conduct frontier innovation sharing and wonderful discussions upon AI, digital assets, cross-border payments and a series of other topics around Fintech.

Professor Charles Chang gave a keynote speech entitled “AI and Finance: Next Gen Corporate Business Informatics”, sharing the current situation of data management in domestic enterprises and its application in enterprise operations. He made a deep analysis of the development process of AI, the application value of AI in business fields, how enterprises could improve investment decisions through AI as well as the development and future trend of China’s fintech.

He stated that making use of AI in companies represents the core competitiveness of enterprises at present and in the future. The application of AI displayed three trends, precise marketing, smart client management, and risk control upgrade, indicating that each enterprise was trying to settle the three issues of acquiring clients, maintaining clients and establishing regular clients. By utilizing the three key elements in AI applications, i.e. computing power, data and algorithm, enterprises can largely improve their investment decisions. Taking the currently frontier companies for example, Professor Chang analyzed the application value of AI in enterprises and deciphered how the industry concentrated on probing into clients to provide diversif,ied data services from multiple dimensions such as the product end, brand end and channel end. He added that the core advantage of AI lay in the improvement and management of business data, while currently, domestic financial institutions were not investing enough in frontier technology in the fintech field, mainly focusing on wealth management. However, China’s fintech has a strong driving force for development, the market scale of intelligent wealth management services in China reaching 30 billion in 2016, 255 billion in 2018, and estimated to reach 740 billion yuan in 2022. Chinese enterprises should seize the opportunities in the times of AI, and enhance the simultaneous development of diverse financial technologies including big data, cloud computing, blockchain and AI through frontier technology to promote the integration of business, finance and technology.

Subsequently, Mr. Zhihao Zhang, also a Fudan Alumnus and Founder and CEO of DigiFT, delivered a speech entitled “Current Situation and Future Outlook on the Compliant Development of Digital Asset”, emphasizing the significance of compliant development while also expounding the relationship between the real-world assets (RWA) and digital assets as well as the innovative development. In addition, he also demonstrated the investment convenience brought by digital assets for public investors by giving the example of the digital issuance of US bonds.

During the third roundtable, Dr. Zhenhua Wang, Deputy Director of FISF Fintech Research Center, carried out a heated discussion with the guests on the topic of “Fintech Development Trend Promoting the Innovative Development of Digital Assets.” Taking the cooperation project just signed with a cosmetic and health enterprise as an example, he informed that FISF Fintech Research Center had been devoted to empowering enterprises with fintech, blockchain and other frontier technology, increasing efficiency and settling the issue of information asymmetry, so that enterprises could be further integrated with fintech.

After 8 hours of wonderful sharing and exchange of ideas, the 2023 International Financial Technology Forum and the 7th Annual Lun Fintech Roundtable concluded successfully. Ever since the 2nd forum, FISF Fintech Research Center has been sticking to its original aspiration of “establishing a platform for mutual exchange and cooperative innovation”, upholding the long-term value of scientific and technological innovation, and carrying on the mutual learning and experience sharing with excellent fintech enterprises, investment institutions, experts and scholars at home and abroad. In this way, it can help strengthen the circulation and innovation of both domestic and overseas technology and business modes and also promote fintech to connect with the world more deeply through its application and development in enterprises.