SY Holdings talks about the future of fintech and Inclusive finance for SMEs at the Hong Kong Fintech Week

28 October 2024, Hong Kong - SY Holdings (“SY”, the “Group”, stock code: 6069.HK) participated in the 9th edition of the Hong Kong Fintech Week, organized by Hong Kong’s Financial Services and the Treasury Bureau and InvestHK, along with the Hong Kong Monetary Authority (HKMA), and the Securities and Futures Commission (SFC) at AsiaWorld-Expo in Hong Kong.

Key officials from Hong Kong’s regulatory bodies, including Financial Secretary Paul Chan, HKMA Chief Executive Eddie Yue, and Secretary for Financial Services and the Treasury Christopher Hui, attended the opening ceremony.

As the flagship event for the region’s fintech development, the HK Fintech Week attracted over 30,000 participants from over 100 countries, gathering global industry leaders from the banking, securities, investment, insurance, and technology sectors to discuss the future of finance and technology. SY participated in a panel discussion titled, “Fintech’s Role in Encouraging Social Impact and Solving Biodiversity Crises” as a partner for the event.

The Hong Kong government unveiled a policy relating to the responsible use of artificial intelligence (AI) in financial markets, alongside several other measures aimed at guiding the growth of the city’s fintech industry.

The policy focused on Hong Kong’s open yet cautious stance on the application of AI in financial markets as an international financial hub. The government also outlined a dual-track approach to promote AI adoption and development in financial services while addressing potential risks related to cybersecurity, data privacy, and intellectual property.

During the panel discussion, Kenny Ng, SY’s Head of International Business, highlighted the Greater Bay Area as “a strategic region and talent hub for the development of the fintech industry.”, in particular, small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) are key to driving economic development and supporting innovation and entrepreneurship. Mr Ng also noted that fintech companies in the Greater Bay Area can also leverage AI and inclusive digital financial services to drive the sustainable growth of SMEs.

As the first listed supply chain technology platform on the Hong Kong main board, SY Holdings has been based in Shenzhen, the core of the Greater Bay Area, for over a decade. The Group has seen first-hand, the region’s rapid growth, in tandem with the development trajectory of the economic environment.

Through continuous investment in R&D, cultivating talent, and applying innovative fintech solutions, SY delivers “timely, efficient, high-quality, and cost-effective” digital financial services that meet the short-term financing needs of SMEs. To date, the Group has invested a cumulative total of over RMB 200 million in R&D investment, and has dedicated over 27% of its workforce in R&D.

SY currently holds a total of 69 patents and software copyrights. Its wholly-owned subsidiary, SY Information Technology Services (Shenzhen) Co., Ltd., has also received numerous national certifications as a “High-Tech Enterprise,” a “Specialized and New Enterprise” in Shenzhen, and a “National Encouraged Software Enterprise” with “National Encouraged Software Products.” The Group’s self-developed “SY Cloud Platform” harnesses AI, cloud, and IoT technologies within the supply chain, facilitating over RMB 210 billion in inclusive digital financial services for over 16,000 SMEs, of which 30% were “first-time borrowers” who were unable to secure financing through traditional channels. This thereby effectively addresses the financing pain points and costs faced by SMEs.

“Riding on the wave of digitization, the use of data analytics in fintech has become a key driver in facilitating SME financing,” Mr Ng said when discussing the role of AI in enabling inclusive finance.

SY’s transaction-focused model uses AI to parse proprietary data on its platform to validate the transaction authenticity and rationality of the SMEs. Through deep integration into the infrastructure and pharma ecosystem, SY has accumulated extensive amounts of industry data. By using its AI model on this data, SY is able to accurately profile the logistics, capital flows, business flows, and information flows for each industry, capturing the transaction profiles of SMEs to assess their financing needs. Using multi-dimensional data and cloud computing, SY’s model allows for automated decision-making in determining credit limits and pricing throughout the process, significantly enhancing risk assessment capabilities and efficiency. The model has successfully achieved 83% accuracy rate predicting repayment cycles, surpassing the standards in manual assessments.

Hong Kong, as an international financial center and a global fintech hub, has established itself as a bridge connecting China enterprises with the rest of the world, serving as a vital gateway for the flow of capital, talent, innovation, and technology. SY intends to leverage the synergies between Hong Kong within the Greater Bay Area, increase its investment in R&D and explore inclusive finance models. As it accelerates the development of cross-border supply chain finance, SY Holdings aims to support SMEs in “going global” and empower Chinese manufacturing to “venture overseas,” injecting vitality into the growth of the real economy.