FINTECH Bridge China UK

Tuesday 11th December

Writing this blogpost from the back of an auditorium at Allen & Overy LLP’s London headquarters. The conference in question: FINTECH Bridge China UK—an invite-only event that commemorates the fintech connections made between the two nations.

Susanne Chishti head of FINTECH Circle, Vice Chairman of China Britain Business Council (CBBC) Sir Tom Troubridge, and Sunan Jiang from the Chinese Embassy kicked off the proceedings with a warm welcome and presentations that mapped the progress of fintech in China and the UK over the past few decades.

Following this was a panel discussion on the importance of Fintech Bridges, moderated by Troubridge featuring Chishti, Allen & Overy’s Ben Regnard-Weirabe, Jon Vollemaere of R5FX, and Jianhau Shao, who is the Solutions Architect at Chinese fintech company Alibaba Cloud.

It was interesting to hear that despite the differences in business cultures, theChinese take a similar approach to regulation as the UK by understanding and engaging with start-ups to help them accelerate towards success.

A presentation by SafeCharge, the global payments technology company behind theWeChat Pay, highlighted the importance of data analysis. The majority of mobile application in China are provided by one company, called Tencent. As result of their monopoly, the company has access to enormous amounts of data which help target gaps in the market and improve the user experience.

Later, Jinny Yan of ICBC Standard Bank, Sherry Madera who is the Special Advisor forAsia City of London, and Greasons Peak’s CEO Henry Tillman shed some light on the infamously opaque China Belt & Road Initiative. Lots of subtopics were discussed, but the most hard-hitting was that the Belt & Road will accelerate global warming if it doesn’t incorporate sustainable energy.

Brexit formed the backdrop to Chishti and Iain Anderson’s (Cicero Group) fireside chat before another panel discussion on tech trends and strategic bets in the UK, Europe and China. During which, Rob Moffat of Balderton Capital, Vinoth Jayakumar of Draper Esprit, William Samego-Turner from Allen & Overy, and Frank Tong from HSBC Hong Kong discussed how to navigate the ‘froth’ in fintech investments.

The conference was also an opportunity to launch the FINTECH Bridge Journal, a global guide to fintech cooperation agreements established between governments and financial regulators with focus on the China-UK Fintech Bridge.

Congratulations to Gekko (HK), SalaryFits, Sharegain, and Funding Exchange for winning the awards for Best China Fintech, Best Fintech Platform, Best Fintech Innovation and Best U.K. Fintech respectively. And a special mention to Frank Tong of HSBC HK who was presented with an award for FINTECH Bridge Ambassador.