BUS News

Four graduates from the MSc in Corporate Governance and Compliance (MScCGC) programme were crowned Champion at the inaugural IFTA Asian FinTech Business Plan Competition. The competition was held online on 29 July 2021, inviting competitive postgraduate students from top-tier universities in Asia to contest against each other.

The team, Chain Green, comprised of Ai Xu, Kar Yan Yeung, Tsz Yan Ng and Chan Zheng, harnessed their expertise in Environment, Social and Governance (ESG) areas to identify the pain points and loopholes in the existing ESG indexes and ESG solutions. Addressing the lack of communication and information provided to investors, corporates and society, the team came up with strategies for investors and corporates respectively, leveraging blockchain technology and high-tech solutions to advance user experience and ESG exposures.  

As CGC students, the team understood the knowledge in financial technology would even better equip them to navigate in the fast-growing and fast-changing business environment. “The Financial Technology course has inspired us to launch the project,” shared Elisa. “It introduced us to the current FinTech development trend and stimulated us to utilise new technology to improve financial services. It also helped us better corporate our CGC knowledge with the FinTech industry, enabling us to apply theories into real world problems and businesses.” 

Having secured the Cyberport Creative Micro Fund (Professional Stream) grant of HK$100,000 earlier this year with the same project idea, the team believed participating in competitions could help them refine their idea and provide a great platform to learn from and network with professionals and industry insiders. The team is now setting up the platform framework and looking for partnership for the project.

Organised by the Institute of Financial Technologists of Asia (IFTA), the IFTA Asian FinTech Business Plan of the Year Competition 2021 aimed to promote entrepreneurship and FinTech innovation among postgraduate students, to help them develop and apply venturing, commercial, and business skills that are vital in today’s business world. The IFTA is an NPO established in Hong Kong in September 2017, to uphold the professional standard of Financial Technologists in Asia and create an ecosystem for global fintech talents to be connected.