BIS governors’ meeting: climate transition, wealth management and financial sector digitalisation to drive Asian economy, panel hears
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“The rise of the new innovation economy, and the opportunities that we see in this part of the world to rethink financial services, is in its prime,” Filippo Gori, JPMorgan Asia-Pacific’s CEO, said on a panel titled “Banking on Asia for the Long Haul” at the HKMA-BIS High-Level Conference 2023.
Asia is rich with talent in the innovation sector, with roughly one-third of the bank’s global workforce based in the region, Gori said. Developing technology that can support the financial sector, particularly in areas such as payments settlement, will be a major opportunity for the region, he added.
Green finance and the “opportunity and challenges” that an energy transition would bring were also discussed by the panellists.
“Asia-Pacific represents 45 per cent of global carbon emissions, with three of the top five emitters,” Gori said. “You can see how this can be a challenge, but can also be an opportunity for the region.”
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“Asia has the highest number of high-net-worth individuals outside the West as a region,” she said. “A common topic among family offices is looking at collecting wealth and deploying it into areas that can make the world a better place.”
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Gori and Lo were joined by Surendra Rosha, co-CEO of HSBC Asia-Pacific, and Eric Jing, chairman and CEO of Ant Group. Ant is a fintech affiliate of Alibaba Group Holding, which owns the Post.
When asked about the relationship between technology giants and traditional banks, the panel agreed that the financial sector would have to work together with technology companies to on board better innovations into the banking services sector.
Lo said UBS was looking at opportunities to adopt digital innovations in the wealth-management sector and added that the bank was actively seeking partnerships with technology giants.
“Technological innovation has enabled us to do business that we couldn’t imagine doing 10 years ago,” said Rosha, citing the example of payment infrastructure systems that have enabled the transfer of salaries to people across different geographies.
“The challenge of innovation is to be consistently looking out for opportunities where we can add value for our customers and really stay focused,” he added.
Jing said Ant was “very excited” to see that central banks in Hong Kong and other parts of the world were introducing central bank digital currencies.
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“We’re very much looking forward to partnering on that,” said Jing. Ant’s infrastructure can provide more commercial products and machines, and really bring the solution to millions of businesses across the world.
“You want to go fast, go alone, if you want to go far, go together.”
