Striving to take the lead in fostering development

It has been a year since the current-term Government took office.  With the concerted efforts of members of the community, Hong Kong has emerged from the pandemic during the year.  Hong Kong has returned to normalcy on all fronts, and normal travel between the city and the Mainland and the rest of the world has fully resumed.  The Government, led by the Chief Executive, is pressing ahead with plans to pursue economic development and enhance Hong Kong’s competitiveness with a view to fostering Hong Kong’s continued advancement in its new journey from stability to prosperity.  We shall actively leverage Hong Kong’s unique advantages of enjoying the strong support of the Motherland while being closely connected to the world under “One Country, Two Systems”.  Thanks to the staunch support of our country and the momentum gained as a result of Hong Kong’s return to normalcy, the Financial Services and the Treasury Bureau (FSTB), in collaboration with financial regulators and industry players, has made quite a number of substantial achievements over the past year.  In this blog article, I am going to sum up our major efforts in promoting financial development over the year by reviewing the three policy statements/development roadmap we issued, the three major events we organised and the three overseas trips we made.

Three policy statements/development roadmap

Issuing policy statements and development roadmaps is a new initiative of the FSTB since the inauguration of the current-term Government.  By launching this initiative, we aim to set out our stance, approach and specific measures, provide clear guidelines for market participants and take forward key development strategies in major policy areas concerning financial development.  Over the past year, we issued policy statements on development of virtual assets (VA) and family office business in Hong Kong as well as a development roadmap for local insurance sector.  The focus of our strategies is on building, for each of these key areas, a comprehensive ecosystem covering legislative and regulatory frameworks, new products and pilot projects, tax concessions, market facilitation measures, talent nurturing and various supporting arrangements.  Measures proposed in the three policy statements/roadmap, which include establishing a licensing regime for VA service providers, providing profits tax exemption for family-owned investment holding vehicles managed by single family offices in Hong Kong, and supporting the issuance of insurance-linked securities, are being implemented in a progressive manner.  As the policy statements and roadmap are well received by the market, we will continue to actively foster development in other major financial policy areas in future using the same approach.

Three major events

Organising industry events helps gather great minds across the globe to explore the way forward and foster business collaboration.  In the past year, the FSTB hosted three major industry events, namely the Hong Kong FinTech Week and the Asian Financial Forum, which have successfully evolved into flagship events, as well as the inaugural Wealth for Good in Hong Kong Summit, which aimed to bring global and Hong Kong family offices together.  The Hong Kong FinTech Week, with “Pushing Boundaries, Reaping Benefits” as its theme, focused on promoting collaboration between the financial and technology sectors.  A number of key policy initiatives to reinforce Hong Kong’s position as a leading fintech hub of Asia were announced during the event, which attracted over 30 000 participants from more than 95 economies.  Meanwhile, the Asian Financial Forum, which was held under the theme of “Accelerating Transformation: Impact ∙ Inclusion ∙ Innovation”, provided a platform for financial and business heavyweights to examine ways to formulate more resilient business development strategies in the light of the turbulent environment in the past few years.  The forum brought together thousands of top businesspeople, senior government officials and thought leaders from over 70 countries or regions, who shared their insights and explored co-operation opportunities in this regard.

The Wealth for Good in Hong Kong Summit was an international top-level exclusive event especially for global family offices and asset owners.  Through the summit, we showcased a wealth of opportunities in areas like investment, arts and culture, green development and philanthropy that Hong Kong could offer to family offices.  Attracting over 100 key decision makers from global family offices and their professional teams across Hong Kong, the Mainland and other parts of the world, the summit enabled us to establish direct connection with the participants and hence help them explore opportunities and implement their development plans in Hong Kong.  Since the hosting of the summit, the dedicated FamilyOfficeHK team of Invest Hong Kong has received enquiries from nearly 100 family offices around the world, about one-third of which have expressed an interest in setting up a family office here.  The FamilyOfficeHK team is actively following up the enquiries, with a view to encouraging these family offices to establish a presence in Hong Kong.

Three overseas trips

Last year, I made a number of overseas trips to personally convey to the financial and business sectors across the globe an important message that Hong Kong had fully resumed normalcy and was back to the centre of the international arena, while telling them the unique and good stories of Hong Kong under “One Country, Two Systems”.  These trips included a trip led by the Chief Executive to the Middle East, a trip to Southeast Asia (the Philippines and Thailand), as well as a trip to Europe (Brussels and London).  The one to the Middle East was to promote friendship and Hong Kong’s advantages as well as explore business opportunities, with a view to bringing the relationship between Hong Kong and the Middle East to new heights, expanding the scope of co-operation between Hong Kong and the Belt and Road (B&R) countries and actively following up the plans of major organisations in the Middle East to set up or expand their business in Hong Kong.  When visiting Manila, the Philippines, I attended the annual meeting of the Asian Development Bank (ADB), its first post-pandemic physical annual meeting conducted offline.  During the meeting, I introduced to the participants the full spectrum of professional services that Hong Kong could offer as an international financial centre including offshore Renminbi finance, green and sustainable financing, fintech solutions and risk management tools, and encouraged the ADB and its partners to explore new opportunities in Hong Kong.  As for the visit to Brussels and London in Europe, I placed my focus on the common development objectives and visions of the two places and Hong Kong, including green and sustainable finance and the establishment of a sustainable regulatory regime for the VA industry, with a view to exploring room for co-operation.

With the first year of the current-term Government drawing to a close, I took the opportunity to meet with representatives from the banking, securities and funds, insurance and accounting industries when attending a recent event about contribution to the B&R Initiative.  Apart from reviewing the achievements we have made through concerted efforts over the past year, we also shared our aspirations and insights with respect to the development of our financial industry in order to draw up specific measures to be taken as we stride forward.  As time waits for no one, I, together with my colleagues in the FSTB, will continue to forge ahead, losing no time in striving for the development of our financial industry and better integration into the overall development of our country.

 
29 June 2023