The Final was hosted by Hannah Richardson, Head of FinTech Enterprise of Finnovasia. 360F, Asset Pro, Cosaic, Featurespace, hoolah, iLex and PwC stood out from 550 applications across 44 global economies and became the finalists. During the pitching sessions by the finalists, Mr. Faiz asked questions on operations, technologies and challenges to help with the evaluation of these companies.
Charles Ng, Associate Director for Investment Promotion of InvestHK, announced the results and congratulated the winner Featurespace, the first runnerup Asset Pro and the second runnerup hoolah.
William Fung, CEO of AMTD Digital and Group Vice President of AMTD Group, Michelle Li, Co-CEO of AMTD Digital, Dr. Frederic Lau, Vice Chairman of AMTD Group, Digital Banking Subject Matter Champion of AMTD Digital, and Board Director of Airstar Bank, Val Yap, Digital Insurance Subject Matter Champion of AMTD Digital and Founder & CEO of PolicyPal, Louis Liu, Digital Payment Subject Matter Champion of AMTD Digital and Co-founder and CEO of FOMO Pay, also participated in the semi-finalist rounds as judges, a recognition for AMTD’s professionalism and impact in FinTech industry.
The panel was moderated by George Kesselman, Head of Commercial of ZhongAn Tech. Val Yap, Founder & CEO of PolicyPal, began the discussion with a brief introduction of PolicyPal and its latest developments. In particular, she mentioned that following the recent strategic acquisition by AMTD Digital, PolicyPal is looking to launch in Hong Kong by the end of year. Cindy Kua, co-Founder & CEO of Sunday, shared the background of Sunday, an InsurTech start-up that began its journey in Thailand in 2017 and has recently expanded into Indonesia.
When asked to share what AI and Big Data could do that wasn’t possible before, Val Yap mentioned PolicyPal started to utilize machine learning to digitalise insurance, by including Optical Character Recognition technology together with taxonomy and rule-based algorithms. Thereafter, they have automated the coverage gap analysis for financial, health, life and retirement planning. PolicyPal is currently working with insurance companies and connecting with IOT devices to build a machine learning algorithm to better assess the needs and comprehensive risk profiles of customers.
Louis Liu pointed out that, the digital payment adoption in ASEAN markets is slower than that in China, as Chinese super apps such as Wechat and Alipay have already established a large user base before promoting digital payments, and the initial policy environment for e-wallets in China is looser – companies in ASEAN countries need to apply for a license first.
FOMO Pay is a one-stop QR code and digital payment solution provider under AMTD Digital being the first batch of Major Payment Institutions licensed by MAS. FOMO Pay is also the founding member of SGQR taskforce, working together with the government to draft the world’s first national QR standard to unify all e-wallets in Singapore and promote cashless society.
Louis added, both China and ASEAN markets are facing more compliance and regulations pressure now. He believes that digital banks are becoming the new normal due to merchants’ demands for one-stop digital services. AMTD and its ecosystem partners now have two digital banking licenses in HKSAR and mainland, namely the Airstar Bank and XW Bank. With all the strengths of AMTD, its subsidiaries and ecosystem partners, AMTD could provide merchants a full suite of financial services from payments, financing, to insurance, etc., and even digital transformations, throughout their digital journey.
