Crowd Valley is invited to speak at the Future of AI in Finance, part of the Hong Kong Fintech Week 2017, the leading financial technology event in Asia, that will take place on October 26 and 27, with over 3,000 senior financial executives and business leaders from more than 30 countries. Crowd Valley’s Chairman Jouko Ahvenainen will represent the company at the event.

Fintech adoption is growing rapidly all over the world, but it’s in the emerging countries that it’s increasing at the fastest rate. According to a report just released by Ernst & Young, the EY FinTech Adoption Index 2017, where the consultancy firm surveyed more than 22,000 people from 20 different markets, the Chinese market is the one with the highest Fintech adoption rate, with 69% of the respondents saying that they were regularly using Fintech services. 
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With its high GDP, 2nd highest e-commerce volume in Asia and high rate of technological adoption, Japan presents a high potential for Fintech investment and adoption. However, the uptake has been lukewarm so far, owing to significant cultural and regulatory obstacles with Japanese investments accounted for only 0.40 percent of the roughly US$12 billion invested into Fintech globally in 2014, according to a report by Accenture. 
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As the world goes through a period of dynamic change and volatility, our CEO, Markus Lampinen in collaboration with Grow VC Group Chairman, Jouko Ahvenainen and Jean-Michel Pailhon, a fintech expert with 15 years of experience in the international financial services sector, take a look a closer look at technology developments globally in conjunction with the global economics and political ecosystem.
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With the recent implementation of the demonetization rules by the Government of India, a lot of  interesting events have taken place in the day-to-day life of the Indian masses. With the largest denomination bank notes of Rs. 500 and Rs. 1,000 taken out of circulation, that accounted for about 86% of India’s cash circulation by value, people were forced to explore alternative routes like online banking and e-wallets as their cash alternatives. 

​​On November 10, 2016, the UK and China announced a joint initiative to provide their domestic investors with new investment opportunities while further opening their respective markets to foreign capital. Named the London-Shanghai Stock Connect, it focuses on eight key areas and ultimately aims at easing cooperation and boosting market access. Those areas range from traditional sectors such as banking and asset management but also include socially important ones, for instance financial inclusion or green finance. 
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Singapore is building its future as a regional fintech hub. Monetary Authority of Singapore, MAS, has taken an active role in this work. Singapore has taken many actions, including a regulatory sandbox, to enable and accelerate more fintech business. An important part of this is Singapore Fintech Festival in mid November.

On October 18, 2016 the Malaysian Central Bank published its financial technology regulatory sandbox framework to enable the live experimentation of fintech solutions in the country. This initiative echoes the statement issued by the Indonesian Central Bank in late September: “Next month we will launch a fintech office [and] establish a special task force that will coordinate with other fintech offices".  In this post, we will get an update on what's happened since they've been deployed.

The Hong Kong Monetary Authority (HKMA) last week announced the launch of a financial technology sandbox, to allow banks to test new innovative products that do not yet meet compliance standards. The new regime is valid as of September 6.
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China announced rules to tighten regulation of the national $60 billion P2P lending industry, with a document issued by the Ministry of Public Security, China Banking Regulatory Commission (CBRC), the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, and the Cyberspace Administration of China. The new regulations took effect on August 24, 2016, but platforms now have one year to adapt their practices according to the framework.
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