Standard Chartered’s Lin Yuandong Hails Cross-border Financing Drive in Greater Bay Area, Says Fintech Will Reshape Banking Sector

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Standard Chartered’s head of operations for the Greater Bay Area says that cross-border financing in the region will take a major step forward with the launch of a new wealth management initiative.

The “Memorandum of Understanding Concerning the Guangdong, Hong Kong and Macau Greater Bay Area Undertaking Trials for the Cross-border Wealth Management Connect Initiative” (关于在粤港澳大湾区开展“跨境理财通”业务试点的谅解备忘录) was executed at the start of February by the heads of regional financial authorities, including the Chinese central bank, the Hong Kong Monetary Authority, the Monetary Authority of Macao and the China Banking and Insurance Regulatory Commission (CBIRC)

Lin Yuandong (林远栋), CEO of Standard Chartered’s Greater Bay Area Centre, said to Nanfang Caijing that the initiative marks a “major step forward” for cross-border financing in the region.

“Cross-border wealth management connect encompasses a greater range of demographics including retail investors, and will provide wealth management products that are more varied via a greater diversity of channels,” said Lin.

Lin also said that Standard Chartered is currently focused on how fintech will reshape the banking sector, and in particular regional supply chain financing.

“Blockchain technology is already being quite effectively applied to a ‘fast lane’ for supply chains,” said Lin.

“By using technologies including, AI automatic learning-image comparison, NLP semantic recognition, OCR text recognition and big data analysis, we can provide one-stop supply chain financing services that encompasses mobile asset collection, fully automated risk management, and across-the-board asset management, thus comprehensively preventing and controlling risk.”

In August of last year Standard Chartered signalled a heightened strategic focus on the Greater Bay Area with the establishment of new regional headquarters, and the appointment of Lin Yuandong, a 25 year veteran of its operations in Taiwan, to the position of CEO.

The remarks from Standard Chartered arrive just after a senior official from the Chinese central bank called for exploration of the use of the digital renminbi to drive cross-border payments in the Greater Bay Area.

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