The Hong Kong Monetary Authority has set out the next phase of its Fintech 2030 strategy, which will pair new technology initiatives with a renewed emphasis on governance and risk management.

Speaking at Hong Kong Fintech Week on Monday, authority chief executive Eddie Yue said the HKMA is launching Project Sage to examine the application and governance of "agentic finance" – artificial intelligence systems that can execute tasks on behalf of users.

"The main purpose of the Sage project is to hope that, under agentic finance, we can both promote application and pay attention to governance," he said.

Yue said a cross-sector expert panel would bring together finance, payments, professional services, technology and academic representatives to explore use cases, sandbox testing, interoperability standards and governance safeguards.

The HKMA is also issuing a discussion paper on banks’ use of agentic AI, seeking views on governance models, responsibility arrangements and a possible central register of trusted agents.

Yue said the aim is to set rules that allow innovation while managing risks.

He also said the authority would launch a post-quantum cryptography toolbox with the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology to help banks prepare for the challenges stemming from breakthroughs in quantum computing.

On tokenisation, Yue said the HKMA is introducing tokenised central bank money to enable 24/7 settlement of interbank tokenised deposits and would expand the number of participating banks to support cross-lender transfers around the clock.

"The benefit is that, for example, quite a number of enterprises with global liquidity to manage can, if round-the-clock tokenised deposit transfers are achieved, make payments at any time and anywhere, across different accounts and even cross-border," he said.

"And for retail investors, if in the future they want to invest in different retail tokenised financial products, they can also more flexibly do their investments 24/7, strengthening the flexibility and security of their asset allocation."

Yue said the HKMA would further pilot tokenised Exchange Fund Bills in the secondary market and explore whether regulated stablecoins could serve as a payment channel.

He stressed that innovation must be matched by governance and risk management so it can go further, land better and benefit more people.



Edited by Tony Sabine