Fintech applications have flourished across the world in the last decade. To further understand the trend in Hong Kong, PolyU’s School of Accounting and Finance has joined hands with AI investment trading start-up Asklora to release the inaugural Fintech Adoption Index (FAI), the first locally developed index to measure Hong Kong consumers’ fintech adoption and impact.

Led by Dr Jingran Zhao, Associate Professor of 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, the FAI project surveyed the adoption of key fintech applications including virtual banking, mobile payments, online brokerage, digital insurance and cryptocurrency by over 1,000 Hong Kong residents.

Overall, the FAI was measured at 55, which captures both the proportion of respondents adopting fintech products and the spectrum of fintech services they adopted, with 51% of them identified as active fintech users. The survey also found online stock brokerage has the second-highest adoption rate among all the fintech applications but ranked second-lowest in terms of active usage rate.

Dr Zhao explained that the results show fintech companies still have more work to do in order to convert new users to active users. Mr Poon added that the use of fintech services is translated into true adoption only when consumers actively use and benefit from it.