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Hong Kong fintech can be the world’s gateway into the Asian Century
- Hong Kong is a microcosm for the future of fintech innovation and the global financial centre for the Asian Century
- The Greater Bay Area will consolidate the city’s position as Asia’s financial hub and provide an even stronger case for companies that intend to scale up
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In a shifting investment landscape with few certainties, there is one thing international investors can agree on. The direction of the next 10 years, and perhaps this century, will be driven by economic growth in Asia – a stretch of the world that encompasses many forms of government, economic systems and demographic diversity.
Whether we decide to call it the “Asian Decade” or the “Asian Century”, its implications for Hong Kong are profound. It is a future that provides a strong case for optimism after a pandemic that has left many Hongkongers looking for hope.
The fact the city is the gateway for the world to access Asia, and for mainland China to access global markets, means Hong Kong is uniquely suited to accommodate this transformation to a new era of finance. Investors such as Bridgewater founder Ray Dalio have described as an epochal shift of changing financial order.
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“Throughout history, the largest trading countries evolved into having the global financial centre and the global reserve currency,” Dalio said in an interview in January, pointing to China as the home of the new global financial centre.
Major investors, banks and financial institutions have clearly got the memo. They are announcing plans to pivot to Asia as fintechs flock to Hong Kong and IPOs boom. For example, Airwallex, a cross-boundary fintech that processes about US$10 billion of transactions annually, has moved to Hong Kong from Australia to become the “global financial cloud” and meet the rising demand in digital payments.
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HSBC doubles down on Asia in massive staffing overhaul
HSBC doubles down on Asia in massive staffing overhaul
HSBC, which announced its Asia pivot this year, is relocating senior leaders to Hong Kong as part of a multibillion-dollar regional investment strategy. The bank has pointed to three demographic megatrends accelerating this shift that require a comparatively sized fintech mega hub.
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