Because the finance industry is becoming increasingly tech-oriented, Zhang said it is “essential” for CUHK finance students to have the latest fintech skills.

“Many of our students will have responsibilities related to fintech, whether it be machine learning or similar skills, and there is definitely a strong demand for people equipped with these kinds of skills,” he explained. “These things are still relatively new and still evolving, so a lot of textbooks don’t reflect these topics yet. That’s why we have industry practitioners visit to help ensure everything we’re teaching is up-to-date.”

A core part of the programme is the intellectual talk series where students share the latest developments in their industries on trending topics like Web3. In addition to being highly informative and educational, this has an added networking benefit.

“We have a very good reputation, especially among local businesses in Hong Kong, and we have a very strong [alumni] network – another aspect that provides many benefits for people interested in the programme,” Zhang said.

Remote work and remote learning have become hot topics since Covid-19 measures forced office and school closures. Although Zhang is happy to have face-to-face instruction back again, he said both students and faculty have become far more proficient at using remote working technology, and that CUHK now offers a “mixed mode” to students who cannot come to the classroom for whatever reason.

“For the past two years, we’ve had no difficulty at all,” he said. “Students have been using Zoom meetings to communicate and we have been using them to prepare for projects and presentations.”

Zhang believes that the new remote work phenomenon will change the business world permanently: “Though there are some things like networking and relationship building that will always be better face-to-face, there are a lot of business tasks such as board meetings that can be conducted a lot more efficiently online.”

“Technology also makes it easier to do due diligence with the IPO process of checking and vetting before you commit to making a trip to China or somewhere else for a business meeting. You can do all of this due diligence from home, and our students are fully equipped with those kinds of skills,” Zhang said.

The CUHK programme, which is ranked 33rd worldwide in the Financial Times’ 2022 “Masters in Finance” list, is available in both full-time and part-time modes.

According to Zhang, the full-time mode mostly consists of new graduates with very little work experience who are training to be industry professionals, whereas the part-time mode is to help enhance local talents’ careers without requiring them to leave their jobs.

Another high-ranking global MSc fintech programme based in Hong Kong is that of the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology (HKUST). With a truly interdisciplinary approach, this programme uses the resources and faculty of the university’s schools of business and management, engineering, and science.

“Fintech is an emerging but important area that has been developing rapidly in recent years,” said programme director Ling Shiqing. “The MSc fintech programme at HKUST is designed for talents and working professionals who want to combine technical and financial knowledge to generate innovative solutions that meet the challenges of this emerging field.”

According to Ling, graduates are equipped with the skills to analyse the engineering mechanisms and financial principles of new and emerging financial technologies, and formulate and solve fintech related problems using practical means supported by the latest engineering methodologies and quantitative techniques.

“Our broad range of courses and complementary enrichment workshops, networking events, extracurricular activities and career services ensure that students are exposed to broad fintech topics and, most importantly, new ideas, with sufficient depth of knowledge to appreciate, assess, and extend these timely fintech developments,” Ling said.

HKUST’s ability to combine the strength of the business, engineering and science schools is something “unique in Hong Kong” and provides a cutting-edge curriculum, he added. Students learn in-depth about the core components of the fintech industry, such as financial operation and basis in finance markets, advanced statistics, blockchain, and AI.

“Our programme attracts the brightest minds from a wide range of industries and functions with diverse professional domains such as engineering, technology, accounting and finance, mathematics and statistics, business management and more,” Ling commented.

HKUST’s faculty are firm believers in the efficacy of face-to-face teaching and the MSc fintech programme is no different. The university hopes to have 100 per cent of learning take place on campus for the autumn semester. As of now, it is not ready to embrace the remote learning environment, though remote work within fintech workspaces is a topic covered in the curriculum.

The programme’s global nature is reflected in the diverse range of HKUST applicants for both the full-time and part-time streams. Over 70 per cent of last year’s class are graduates with diverse undergraduate majors including engineering, mathematics and statistics, accounting, business and marketing management and have obtained degrees from universities in the US, Australia and the UK.

In addition, an optional exchange programme gives students the opportunity to gain international exposure for a half-term at the prestigious ESSCA Business School in France.

New students or those just starting their careers are also offered world-class career development and guidance counselling at HKUST.

“Throughout the MSc fintech experience, the Business School’s career and development team provides guidance and support service for all students,” Ling said, adding that a series of international career talks helps students to explore career options.

Ling believes HKUST’s faculty has some of the best scholars from top global institutions around the world, and the MSc fintech programme draws expertise from areas such as information technology, blockchain, data science, machine learning and decision analytics.

The university also frequently hosts networking activities such as alumni gatherings, mixers and reunions to provide engaging opportunities for students to interact with business professionals from diverse backgrounds.

Hong Kong Polytechnic University’s (PolyU) Doctor of Fintech (DFinTech) programme is aimed at more established professionals such as top executives and business entrepreneurs who are interested in gaining a greater understanding of fintech’s impact on various industries.

“Our programme is probably different from many universities in the sense that ours is more of a DBA-type of programme,” said Steven Wei, PolyU’s deputy director of the programme.

“So our students are senior managers from different fields like banking, finance, law or business law, or entrepreneurs trying to transform their firms into digital technology firms, or trying to use digital technology to improve the performance of their firms, something we call ‘the digital transformation’,” he added.

The programme stays on top of the very latest technological developments in the financial sector and teaches its students how to use them to their businesses’ advantage. This includes fields like AI, big data, blockchain technology, cybersecurity, cloud computing and a specialist field of PolyU’s – smart city development.

“Our university has a Smart City Institute which we work with closely, and we are doing a lot of things to try to turn Hong Kong into a smart city,” said Wei, noting that Hong Kong has entered the second phase of the smart city transformation.

“Our programme is truly interdisciplinary across different faculties, schools and departments so we try to integrate them because I think it is time to put all of those together to make Hong Kong a smart city. We are especially focused on a dimension called ‘smart economy’ – making the Hong Kong economy more efficient through the use of technology.”

PolyU is currently working with the Hong Kong Monetary Authority and the Hong Kong Institute of Banks to train professionals – not just students – to become more fintech savvy, to digitise banks and other financial institutions so that they run more efficiently.

The programme also has an emphasis on the latest Web3 technology. Wei said one of this year’s cohorts works for real estate giant Henderson Land Group, and is helping his firm work on the tokenisation of property assets – something which could revolutionise the real estate industry in Hong Kong through the use of property-based NFTs.

He said some of the fields are so new that PolyU hasn’t been able to create adequate coursework yet, but will do so very soon.

“This is part of the mission and vision of our programme,” Wei said. “If we want to develop the digital economy, leaders and talents in these fields are very important. Many universities are trying to train people in the technicalities of how to work with blockchain, AI and other types of technology. Our programme is different – we are trying to train the leaders, the CEOs and the chairmen, so that they may lead us into the future.”

The DFinTech programme isn’t just Hong Kong-based, but also focuses on integrating the Greater Bay Area into the digital economy, something that is considered extremely important for the city’s future economic prosperity.

“We want our students to be the leaders to drive the development of the digital economy in this region,” Wei said. “Of course, students from other parts of Asia and the world can extend our ideas to other regions as well. But we are greatly focused on the Greater Bay Area.”

Wei is also optimistic about Covid-19 restrictions easing in China soon and, like Zhang, believes that the pandemic had some unintended bright spots.

“It was a big shock, but this shock was in some sense good for digital technology because it forced people to think about how to connect with each other using digital technology – therefore, it has all developed extremely fast,” Wei said.

The pandemic also caused the programme to adapt from face to face into a hybrid model. Though Wei prefers teaching in person, he believes that a global programme such as the PolyU DFinTech that consists of executives and CEOs from all over the world, needs an online learning option.

“Our programme has students from the mainland, Southeast Asia and soon we will have students from the Middle East, so we cannot avoid online teaching,” said Wei, who hopes that Hong Kong universities will soon start offering more accredited online courses and modules.