The Hong Kong Polytechnic University’s (PolyU) School of Accounting and Finance, in partnership with AI investment trading startup Asklora, has released the first PolyU-Asklora Fintech Adoption Index (FAI), which is the first locally developed index to measure Hong Kong consumers’ fintech adoption adoption and impact.
FAI surveyed over 1,000 Hong Kong residents regarding their use of key fintech applications, including virtual banking, mobile payments, online brokerage, digital insurance and cryptocurrency. The survey found that online brokerage has the second highest adoption rate among all fintech applications, but ranked second lowest in terms of active usage rate. Conversely, digital insurance has the second lowest usage rate, while it scores the second highest in active use. The survey also found that users of virtual banking services had a higher overall adoption rate for all types of fintech applications. For example, 77% of them were users of online brokerage services.
The PolyU-Asklora project is led by Dr Jingran ZHAO, associate professor at the School of Accounting and Finance, Mr Jack POON, professor of practice from the same school and Mr Stephen Joon CHOI, co-founder and Chief Technology Officer of Asklora. Overall, the FAI was measured at 55, which captures both the proportion of respondents adopting fintech products and the range of fintech services they adopted, with 51% of respondents identified as active fintech users. Furthermore, 85% of respondents reported being satisfied with their experience with fintech solutions, with security cited as their top concern.
Dr. Jingran Zhao said: “The FAI survey results show that Hong Kong residents are keen to adopt fintech products, but fintech companies still have more work to do to convert these new users into active users by, for example, improve the safety of their products.”
Mr Jack Poon also noted: “It takes two to tango. Financial institutions’ fintech offerings, which are the supply side, do not translate into true adoption until consumers use and benefit from the offering. FAI measures demand-side adoption by surveying consumers. Understanding consumer adoption friction is an important step in expanding financial inclusion in Hong Kong.”
The FAI is a long-term research project to measure the evolution of Hong Kong fintech adoption through various events and market conditions, and will be released on a quarterly basis. The next release will be in December with an expanded scope and more participants obtained through online and offline surveys.
Risk Warning: Cryptocurrency is an unregulated virtual notoriously volatile asset with a high level of risk. Any news, opinion, research, data or other information on this website is provided for news reporting purposes as general market commentary and does not constitute investment or trading advice.
