HLB is seeking to convert more of its retail and commercial banking relationships into wealth relationships and retain customers as their assets become increasingly sophisticated, cross border and intergenerational. Its growth ambitions depend on deepening relationships it already has while building the capabilities to serve them.

JP Morgan is expanding Kinexys across currencies and payment infrastructures while participating in industry-led networks. Zack Chestnut argues that the greater value lies not in any single form of digital money, but in connecting fiat, tokenised assets, public and private blockchains and emerging settlement systems.

The Nasdaq-listed digital asset treasury, Solana Company, is betting that active capital management can give shareholders greater SOL exposure over time than buying the digital asset directly, while its infrastructure and advisory businesses remain ancillary to that objective.

The Asian Banker Weekly Brief: India resumed monetary tightening as US and French bond markets sold off, oil remained above $100 a barrel and the Financial Stability Board identified gaps in bank-resolution funding.

DBS is bringing cash management, trade, supply chain finance, real-time payments and tokenised money closer together as Asian companies expand into new markets. Sriram Muthukrishnan sees convergence as the central change, with clients increasingly looking at payments, collections and financing as part of the same transaction banking experience.

Bank of America sees the convergence of AI, distributed ledgers and tokenisation as a major new technology cycle in payments. Mark Monaco says the opportunity is to turn these technologies into faster, more efficient and safer outcomes for clients, while introducing AI progressively and responsibly.

Asia’s local currency bond markets, led by Greater China, give sovereigns, supranationals and agencies cheaper funding from new investors and will grow.

Emirates NBD has shortened due diligence turnaround times by embedding AI-based document processing into live workflows, backed by human review and data lineage.

AI and robotics could vastly expand production, but ownership, taxation and distribution will determine who benefits.

Hong Kong’s leading banks accelerated median pre-tax profit growth to 16.3% year on year (YOY) in the first half of 2026 (1H2026). HSBC Hong Kong (including Hang Seng Bank) continued to lead the large-scale bank segment in earnings scale and returns, while DBS Hong Kong and CMB Wing Lung Bank delivered stronger growth momentum and profitability among mid-sized banks. Across the sector, growth was increasingly supported by fee-based businesses, wealth management, cross-border activity and digitally-enabled customer engagement, which emerged as key drivers of revenue expansion.

Sustainable Finance Weekly: South Korea’s K-GX commits KRW 1,000 trillion to industrial decarbonisation, Thailand’s sovereign SLB adds a nature-related target and Masdar extends its framework to selected offshore renewable projects.

TAB China Weekly Brief: Golden Week lifts Alipay and Weixin cross-border payments as China begins mortgage subsidies, auctions RMB 150 billion in bank capital bonds and enforces online financial marketing rules.

Financial Technology Weekly: MAS and Ping An Bank tighten AI accountability as agentic tools reshape bank operations, while DNB cuts 400 roles and CrowdStrike traces agentic attacks on Korean banks.

Financial Markets Weekly: ICE and OKX file to trade 63 tokenised US stocks, the CFTC seeks views on leveraged retail crypto trading, and UBS hands fund administration to Northern Trust.

Balaji Srinivasan and Polymarket founder Shayne Coplan described different ways to apply crypto infrastructure beyond digital assets, from online communities acquiring physical premises to prediction markets operating across regulated financial markets.