Annie Chen, deputy chief executive of China Construction Bank (Asia) (CCB (Asia)), explained how the bank manages its Hong Kong retail and wealth management business, as customer needs increasingly span the Guangdong–Hong Kong–Macao Greater Bay Area (GBA) including Guangdong, Shenzhen and other parts of the Mainland. Growth is shaped by fee-based wealth activity, digital execution and tightly governed product sequencing, rather than balance-sheet expansion alone.

Alliance Bank Malaysia is reworking its consumer lending economics by embedding credit products into partner ecosystems such as e-wallets and e-commerce platforms/apps, supported by a unified loan origination architecture designed to deliver a faster approval turnaround time.

Global banking enters 2026 with strong capital positions and easing financial conditions but faces a structurally more constrained environment shaped by slower growth, rising fiscal pressure, geopolitical fragmentation, evolving trade and payment corridors, shifting currency dynamics, deeper market-based intermediation and the accelerating impact of digitalisation

Woon Siew Hoong, Head of SME Banking at Hong Leong Bank explained how the bank’s SME franchise delivered resilient performance in 2025 by focusing strategically on micro and small businesses, applying relationship-managed discretionary credit, and embedding SME banking within a whole-bank operating model spanning retail, commercial, corporate and institutional banking.

Chinese and US megabanks generate the largest absolute profits through scale and diversification, while emerging-market banks deliver higher — but more volatile — returns on equity.

Stephen Man, Head of Wealth and Retail Banking at Standard Chartered Hong Kong, explains how the bank’s retail strategy is centred on affluent-led growth, a hybrid digital–advisory operating model and a disciplined approach to innovation, balancing scale, productivity and governance in a complex market environment.

As wallets, instant payments and embedded finance reshape how customers interact with payments across Asia Pacific, card issuance is often assumed to be losing relevance. David Lim of Alliance Bank Malaysia, Anshul Sabherwal of Standard Chartered and Andrew Murray of FIS examine how issuance is being repositioned to support credit, control and engagement in a wallet-first payments ecosystem.

As artificial intelligence moves from experimentation to core financial infrastructure, governance is becoming the decisive factor shaping the future of financial services. Regulators, institutions and ecosystems are redefining accountability, culture and capability to scale AI safely, responsibly and sustainably.

Florian M Spiegl, founder and chief executive officer of Evident, explains how the firm is building a full-stack digital asset platform focused on private equity, private debt and fund structures, how China functions as both an origination and demand driver, why Hong Kong’s Securities and Futures Ordinance framework shaped Evident’s operating strategy, and how the firm is pursuing profitability through platform economics rather than balance-sheet risk.

TNEX CEO Nguyen The Minh explains how lending economics, funding structure and regulatory constraints shape the company’s development as a digital finance provider in Vietnam.

Regulated digital money is shifting from trials to early production as major banks including HSBC, JP Morgan and Standard Chartered move towards interoperable, compliant settlement systems operating alongside existing rails.

Tuan Nguyen, group chief information officer (CIO) of Techcombank, explained how a cloud-first strategy, multi-year platform modernisation and delivery discipline reshaped the bank’s technology foundations over its first five-year transformation cycle and set the operating conditions for the next phase.

As China enters the longevity era, high-net-worth (HNW) families are demanding more than wealth management. Taikang Family Office has responded by building an integrated finance + services ecosystem, combining wealth, health, succession and family governance into a single life-cycle solution for long-term family needs.

Riverchain is applying proprietary data and technology and disciplined underwriting to construction supply chain finance, addressing a long-standing liquidity and risk imbalance.

As global wealth becomes increasingly mobile, wealth managers face rising execution risks from regulatory fragmentation, geopolitical uncertainty and intergenerational complexity. WRISE Group executive chairman Derrick Tan explains how governance design, regional leadership and technology are being used to scale across Asia and the Middle East without fragmenting control.