HKMA Chief Talks Markets, Tech and More

hkma chief talks markets, tech and more. the hong kong monetary authority’s chief executive spoke about various topics regarding the city’s financial sector during an hsbc event, including the recent market strength, china connectivity, future tech plans and more. during the hsbc global investment summit 2025, hong kong monetary authority (hkma) chief executive eddie yue spoke about a plethora of topics in a session entitled «resilience and opportunities: hong kong’s vital role in the global financial landscape». firstly, he addressed the strong performance in the local stock market, with the hang seng index up around 20 percent year-to-date. he attributed the gains to three factors: a revaluation of tech stocks due to the emergence of deepseek, increasing policy support from beijing and revival of the ipo pipeline, which he said has seen another 100 applications. «in the beginning, we were seeing money mainly coming from fast money, hedge funds [and] southbound flows coming from mainland investors because these are the names that they know. and that was the first wave,» yue said in the panel attended by finews.asia. «but more recently, we're hearing that more and more long-only managers, who are very underweight in hong kong chinese equities, are coming back to the market.». china connectivity. yue also discussed hong kong’s connectivity to mainland china including ongoing plans to broaden access to the latter’s financial markets, especially for chinese bonds. efforts are underway to improve the attractiveness of the asset class including the development of a hedging market, enhancement of liquidity and the use of such bonds as collateral. the central banker also touched on further upgrades to an existing cross-border wealth management scheme called «wealth connect» not only in relation to quota, product suite and the selling process. authorities are also exploring the possibility of expanding the scheme beyond the 11-city greater bay area to other cities in the mainland. tech: ai and tokenization. on technology, yue said that two elements will definitely be involved in the hkma’s future strategy: artificial intelligence (ai) and tokenization. within ai, hong kong is encouraging financial institutions to embrace the technology responsibly with a sandbox that has been established to test about 15 use cases, including those related to risk management, anti-money laundering and customer interfaces. the regulator is also bullish on the tokenization of assets like trade finance, carbon credit and deposits as well as cryptocurrencies. «we know that crypto will stay no matter how much we want to just burn away. crypto will be here and we welcome that development,» yue said. hong kong dollar peg. one frequently asked question about hong kong in finance is the possibility of the elimination of the longstanding peg between the hong kong dollar and the us dollar, which has provided investors with stability and predictability when dealing between the city and the global financial system for 42 years. «i should also count how many times i've answered that question. maybe 151 times, i guess,» yue reiterated. «so for anybody who still has any lingering doubts about the plan, i can tell you right here, right now, that, no, we're not going to change it. period.».