On Day 3 of Hong Kong FinTech Week, Raymond Yung, Vice Chairman of AMTD Global Advisory Committee, Zhao Weixing, Vice President of Airstar Digital and former Chief Executive of XW Bank, Raymond Qu, Founder and CEO of Geoswift and Paula Liu, Head of Digital, Innovation & Client Experience of AMTD Digital, held a virtual panel discussion on the application of Banking as a Service (BaaS) in FinTech.
Zhao Weixing, Vice President of Airstar Digital and former Chief Executive of Xin Wang Bank, pointed out that open banking platforms utilizes the power of FinTech to serve long-tail customers that are not served by traditional financial institutions to enhance user experience and meet all user needs. Open banking enable financial institutions to digitalize by modularizing and compartmentalizing financial needs and connect assets, funds flows and various users effectively through open API. Within the FinTech ecosystem, independent institutions can create huge synergies by interconnecting with one another via open API.
Raymond Qu, Founder and CEO of Geoswift, shared that Geoswift has cooperated with various financial institutions in recent years, including UnionPay and Alipay, and the institutions have remained open-minded on sharing and integrating data. He believes that it is very important for traditional banks to indirectly provide services to clients by cooperating across platforms and bringing together different business ecosystems, to achieve a win-win situation for customers, technology companies and bank platforms.
Paula Liu, Head of Digital, Innovation & Client Experience of AMTD Digital, provided a comparison between the development of domestic and overseas open banking platforms. Traditional banks are being disrupted and forced to change. She believes that the development and regulation of FinTech in China is way ahead of the overseas markets. Currently, the global banking industry generally faces issues such as low ROE, lack of new growth opportunities and pressing cost control measures. Traditional banks, in particular, are considering their direction of transformation, while FinTech companies can provide them with ideas, and regulators can provide collaboration framework and guidance on the adoption of open banking services.
