 Well, welcome everybody to this press conference on financial literacy in the age of digital banking. Thank you for joining me, both on the live stream and here in the audience. I have a great panel lined up here today, so I'm gonna introduce all of them. But first, let me just give you a little bit of an overview of what we're gonna be speaking about. So today, there's a lot of questions about how individuals can safely engage with new banking technologies. There's an increasing use of online banking worldwide and it's really changing the way of how people operate and how people understand financial literacy is a growing concern. We have China's rapid adoption of digital banking technologies and understanding new approaches to financial literacy are becoming even more and more important. So we're gonna be talking to each of our panelists. We're gonna get into a little bit of a deep dive here and then I know I have a couple questions I'd like to ask and I think we may have one or two from the audience. So without further ado, I'm gonna first introduce the person on my left, Dr. Frederick Lau, who's the vice chairman of AMTD Group and he's actually the future CEO of a virtual bank in Hong Kong between Xiaomi and AMTD. We also have Dr. Wang Zhou, the chief economist of China National Gold Group Corporation and we also have Jia Chen Zhang, who's the chief executive officer and founder of points. So financial literacy, what is it? Dr. Lau, can you please maybe give us a bit of an overview? It's probably a little bit difficult to really define our financial literacy. People now go to the banks to put deposits in and they do investments and they borrow money. Are they really understand what is financial matters? Yes or no? I just heard a friend told me, her mother is a stock investor, but she was comparing two stocks one is value at five dollar market point and the other is ten dollars. She said the five dollars is much cheaper. I'll buy the five dollar one. So that is some, I guess, some people are kind of getting into the stock market, thinking they understand what is the market all about. Just a couple days ago, the US Treasury Department issued some kind of notice and asking universities to develop certain programs to teach university students to improve their financial literacy and because the student loan problem is getting bigger and bigger, it's almost unsolvable for the US government now or for some of the students. So the financial literacy really is causing some kind of issues in developing countries and developed countries. But what is financial literacy? And I guess to improve financial literacy really is a dynamic process. It's not a static. Now, just like we look at some of the developments in China and we in Hong Kong, we go to China a lot, but we kind of try to catch up China's development in fintech and Hong Kong is kind of behind in fintech areas and in China, all we need is get a thing a cell phone, get a cell phone and then we can pay everything we buy and then every restaurant we go to. But in Hong Kong that is still lacking behind and so that in China, I think the fintech development is much faster, probably compared to the other countries and but that doesn't mean the people using a cell phone to do payments. The financial literacy progress is faster than the other people in the other countries. So it's still a lot of teaching to do, a lot of promotion, a lot of education we have to do. And then could you maybe go into a little bit more about the different groups of countries that you're seeing? I know obviously China is very forward-looking and things are a lot more advanced here especially then in the US when it comes to paying for things on your mobile phone but how is the education piece developing? It's a good question. Thank you. I don't go to a lot of countries, I stay in a lot of countries but I just compare Hong Kong and China. And in China, I think the P2P, the P2P landing is pretty popular. Our partner, Xiao Mi, and Xiao Mi, they participated in a couple of the landing facilities. One is the, it's called Xing Wang Bank. In China, they own 29.5% of the bank and they also have small micro-lending facilities in Sichuan province and they get a model to analyze some of the consumer's behavior. But in Hong Kong, the data privacy issue is very, I guess, I can say conservative. People are very unwilling to release any data to banks and however, they didn't know when they joined Facebook and all the data is given to Facebook. But they are very reluctant to release any data to banks. So that is kind of like a give or take type of situation. If banks get more data, more information from the borrower or from the consumer, they'll be able to provide more services or more favorable services, favorable terms to the consumers. But if you are unwilling to release any of your private data to banks, and banks will not be able to do a lot of things. Okay, thank you very much. I think that provides us the more data point, more services. I know data is sort of the oxygen of the fourth industrial revolution. It is a great way to take us to Judge and Zong. Can you tell us a little bit more about the latest trends in fintech and also what new offerings are gonna be put in front of consumers? Yes, absolutely. Just like Ms. Liao has mentioned, the notion of how to make use of data without sacrificing information and privacy is really the big topic right now in the financial industry as well as the fintechs place. This year in Davos, actually the notion of confidential computation, which is also called privacy preserving computation is gaining a lot of attention because right now there are new type of engineering techniques you can do to allow data owners to actually collaborate on their proprietary data sets without exposing the raw information to each other. Four calculations such as credit scoring, joint marketing campaigns, anti-floor detections. So this type of technology will open up a new way to define the data collaboration protocol between financial institutions and individuals or even among financial institutions themselves. So this is super exciting and I think this will play a very important role in the financial industry and fintech space going forward. Besides that, the continued usage of machine learning and techniques to in analyzing and distilling insights from the data, the digital contracts for the streamline, the signing process and verification process of a lot of paperwork, all of those goes into providing a frictionless experiences for people and business to enjoy financial services. So and all of those at the front-facing level will create much better experiences for those consumers. However, the challenge is a lot of, a lot of those technologies that backbone technologies that enable better experiences in front, so sometimes it's very hard for consumers to tell when good service providers which is properly implementing these technologies versus those ones who are not, but they claim they do, while actually a lot of risk will come associated to that. And that kind of risk is very hard to be understood by the consumers and sometimes by the regulators too. And so I think engaging in like a safe and responsible manner as a consumer is really important. Do you have any advice or insights into how that can happen? Yes, so I think it's very hard but there are things we can try to tackle this problem. The responsibilities lies both on the regulator side, the industry participant side, as well as the consumers. For example, the industry and the regulators try to help the consumers to better understand how the tech actually works. One example, the service shows that actually young people, millennials today actually have a lot of trust on what they see on a mobile phone screen. If it says you have this amount of balance on your screen, then they will believe there is such type of balance. And obviously that's not necessarily true from a technical perspective. Printing a balanced number on your screen doesn't actually mean that institution have that much on your account. So that doesn't take away from doing other type of research on those services. Standards and also tests performed by regulators and also industry associations will be also very important to be established so that it will give shortcuts for those consumers to tell the good appropriate ones from the bad ones. Thank you very much. I think now we're gonna turn to Dr. Wang Zhou. The Global Future Council on FMS has been exploring financial inclusion and literacy as a big component of that globality. How does China compare to the rest of the world when it comes to this inclusion? I think this is also a very good question and thank you. And I think actually to talk about the financial literacy and financial inclusion, China is a very good example because it has been making progress in this 20 years. And I think I'll provide also an example in China a real story actually. I think a lady told me a story of her own. The lady whose hometown it's in rural area in Sichuan province, not in good economic condition has been working in Beijing, the capital city of China for I think tens of years. And I think 15 years ago, she went back to her hometown with her husband and the family once a year, in Spring Festival. And then at the time, they'll take the whole year income with them. And when I say with them, I'm the real with them, the cash with them. Sometimes tens of thousands Yuan, Renminbi, sometimes even more, hundreds of thousands Yuan, Renminbi. Because in our opinion, it was not safe and not convenient at all because Sichuan province and rural area is far away from Beijing. It was a long journey. They usually took the train and took the cash with them. Why did they do so? Actually, she's only the example of amount of people at the time. I think maybe tens of millions of people at the time they did almost the same thing. They went back home to rural areas once a year in Spring Festival and they took the cash with them. Yeah, one explanation at the time was that it was a cultural thing because Chinese people, they love cash. It was a cultural thing or it was a tradition or it was a habit. But actually, I think this is not the answer. Because at the time, we can see that why they took the cash home. First of all, when they had some income, they wanted to invest. But they invest for what? They did not know. And they did not have many choices to invest. So mostly, they took the money home to invest one thing for those tens of millions of people invest one asset, the house. They would build the house newer and bigger although they almost didn't live in that house because that is far away from the capital city. They almost did not use that house anymore and did not live in that house anymore. Yeah, and secondly, we should ask why they took cash with them because in rural areas, it was not easy to find a way to use bank cards. Even they have bank accounts and bank cards in capital city in Beijing, Shanghai or other big cities. When they went back to rural areas, post machines were rare. And when you want to buy things, want to have some exchanges or some other things to use your money, it was not convenient to use the cards. So the cash is the most convenient thing. And thirdly, why didn't they transfer the money to like the bank in the branches in some province because the terminal bank branches in the rural areas were rare. And if they wanted to extract their money to cash when they wanted to use them, they should still go far away to do this thing to find a bank branches or terminal service to them. So it was not convenient. That is the most important thing. So we can see that at the time, the lacking of financial infrastructure caused the lacking of financial inclusion and also caused the lacking of financial literacy at the time. And we'll see in this 20 years, we had this three term, yeah, this circumstances is facing problems. We see the problems at the time. And then making progress, solving the problems, old problems, but then facing new problems. I mean, making progress across because the technologies really helped us and everyone to the excess to the financial system. And right now, I think even people in rural areas far away, they still can use mobile payments, mobile or online platforms to buy things, to exchange, to transfer money. It is convenient. Then the access to the financial system would be easier. We would say the financial inclusion has been approved, but also they have some new problems right now, just like the NANI. In the past, we would say, lacking of financial inclusion or lacking of financial literacy was because they had too less or even no choices. But right now the problem is they have too many choices. And yeah, in the past, they were afraid of, the risk was stealers and robbers in the train because it was a long journey. And right now, they are afraid of financial frauds, something like that and hackers and their privacy's data's would be stolen, something like that. And they're facing too many, too many choices, financial choices, products, services, all kinds of platforms and corporations, organizations. And they just don't know what to choose and how to choose. So I think in this story, actually it's a miniature of the whole China compact. The problem actually shifted from the lacking of financial infrastructure, lacking of financial inclusion to lacking of financial literacy. So it seems like there's a really big interplay between convenience and trust when we're starting to educate ourselves about how to take better care of our finances and how to interact with different systems. It's fascinating. I think where we're gonna move on to next is I just want to follow up and make a little bit of an announcement on behalf of the Global Future Council. They concluded an innovation challenge to highlight different solutions for solving this financial literacy challenge. And the challenge winner is Finn Easy, a UK startup with operations in Ghana in South Africa. And the firm is going to join the Global Future Council experts in Dubai later this year at our big annual meeting. So Dr. Joe, can you please share with us some of the lessons that you've learned in this challenge and some of the exciting developments that kind of came out of it? Yeah, I think the procedure is really exciting because the GFC, the Global Future Council on financial and monetary system actually launched this financial literacy innovation challenge which has been concluded right now. And the challenge has been developed to recognize and to support new FinTech firms, companies which are helping to enhance financial literacy in new and innovative ways. Actually in the past, GFC teams or our teams has focused on the impact of new technologies or to say that digitization, how the impact on these financial services providers or how they have impact on people, the general people, the access to the financial system. But right now, I think as the more and more people are helped by the technologies, by the digital instruments, yeah, so they have more and more convenient access to financial system and they're facing the new problems just like the story I told in China. Yeah, they're facing more problems to facing the more complex world or the more complex choices, yeah. How they can make right choice from the big decisions to make, yeah, this is the new problem. That's why we do this, yeah, launch this challenge. And I also think not only the lacking of financial literacy is the result of the lacking of financial inclusion but also lacking of financial literacy can cause, yeah, lacking of financial inclusion because actually all of the world, almost every two, yeah, every two in three adults globally are financially illiterate, yeah. And in African countries, you can see this. Yeah, sometimes people make very poor financial decisions. Yeah, that hinders the financial inclusion as well. So we realize that financial education is also very important. That's why we did this challenge. And we found that funeasy. I think the name of this company is just fine and easy and I did some products and service to provide some fine and easy ways to educate people for some financial knowledges and skills. Yeah, through some a chatbot, a chatbot, yeah, you can interact with the chatbot easily and it will tell local stories and have some interesting content and it has some surfaces very personalized. And so it is easier for people, especially in African countries and some developing areas countries, yeah, to realize that now I know something really about what finance is, yeah. That is very important. Of course, and the scalability is the distinctive advances of this finance or fine easy company. That's why it was outstanding in other, in all the competitors. Also the management team is also stood out because it's diversity and it showed the compassion and their purpose, yeah, that's why. And of course, although this company is the winner, we also found that all over the world we received a lot of exciting applications and they have some other things or instruments or ways to help people like in African or Jordan or especially for kids, yeah, and for women, yeah, who's lacking of this financial literacy. So it is very interesting procedure. Yeah. That's great. Thank you for that extra background on that and congratulations to our winner. I think I'd like to turn to each of you to give us a final thought or a final word to close out this press conference. So Ms. Zhang, can we start with you? Some final thoughts? Yeah, I think technology is evolving. So is our society. So also this is a very interesting time in developing countries and in developing countries people are working on different type of priorities but today's world there are still a lot of businesses and individuals that are underserved. A lot of the vintage systems are very hard to use. So it's also an exciting time when the technologies such as the type pioneers at we forum meet with the financial industry leaders at this place and beyond to develop more responsible and easy to use features and products for the general public. So it's about creating more options but also about explaining the options well so that everyone can actually benefit from it. Excellent. Dr. Lau, final thoughts? I think financial literacy is a one of the important topics either the government, the regulators, or the practitioners like us and have to do more about it. And the virtual bank, you just mentioned, we're gonna have a virtual bank in future, probably in six months. And one of the first things we are gonna do is to add a little bit of a little bit of a little bit of a little bit of a little bit of a little bit of what we are gonna do is to educate our consumers. It's to educate our consumers. This is not you have a bachelor degree, you have a master degree, even you have a doctor degree and you know financial well. And I'll give you one example. My brother-in-law immersed one million Hong Kong into a con company and then he lost at the entire one million Hong Kong. But it is something, I mean he has a master degree. So I think this is a dynamic process. And every level, I mean we can talk about the financial inclusion of the rural areas. But in the educated segment of the society, they also need financial literacy to improve the financial literacy. I think we should do more. Across the spectrum, everyone has to do their part. Okay, Dr. Jo, close us out. Final thoughts. Okay, I think we're in the increasingly complex and digital world. Yeah, that's why I think the GFC and the team of financial and monetary system and I think all of us can do more about to promote innovative solutions to improve financial literacy, to empower people facing this more and more complex and digital world, yeah. Thank you very much. Well, we have a lot to talk about at the GFC in November. Thank you everybody, thank you panelists and enjoy the rest of your meeting. Thank you. Thank you.