On 29 August, 2019, Khong Yueng Wah, the Associate Dean of the Faculty of Finance, City University of Macau led the students for master’s and doctoral degrees to attend a special topic seminar themed "The Empowerment of Financial Technologies and the Transformation of Commercial Banks" in the course of Special Topic Discussions on the Financial Frontier. The topic of the seminar was introduced by Director Tang Shiqi. Director Tang used to work as the director of the Financial Research Institute of Beijing Normal University, Zhuhai and the person in charge of the 13th Five-Year Plan of the Financial Reform and Development of Zhuhai and now serves as the executive director and a professor of the Hengqin Innovative Financial Research Institute and as the chairman of the Expert Committee of Zhuhai Organization for the Promotion of Economic Development.

  First, Director Tang elaborated on "Financial Technology", a hot topic in the current financial industry. According to him, financial technology is based on technology; technological finance applies technology to the financial field and is an application domain in the financial industry. The focus of this seminar was financial technology. The features of financial technology are as follows: the possibility of mass fissure, the diversity of providers, the Paret distribution of customers, the complexity of interdisciplinary combination, and the intersectionality of multiple risks, and the possibility of risk control. A diverse and energetic biological system derived from financial technology, and it is a combination of the market subjects, supervision institutions, and incubation and investment organizations of financial technology. This biosphere is related to financial technology companies, start-ups, technological supervision enterprises, and traditional financial institutions. In the support for the growth of start-ups, efforts must be made to improve relevant laws so that technological enterprises can operate in the financial industry and undertake transaction and settlement with compliance. Besides, propping up financial technology start-ups requires enormous capital, so the biosphere needs to attract investment funds. Both the incubator and the Hengqin Entrepreneurial Park are effective platforms of resource integration and sharing. The entire biosphere of financial technology needs to attract financial technology investment institutions and various commercial model incubators. Experiments are constantly undertaken and experience is continuously summarized in practice to advance the whole financial technology industry.

  Then, Professor Tang discussed the application of artificial intelligence, block chain, cloud computing, big data and mobile internet in the financial sphere. The utilization of financial technologies is buttressed by basic technologies. In the end of the seminar, the teachers, the students and the expert explored how the 5G technology was integrated with financial application situations, such as how the technology will be adopted for smart cities. Professor Tang shared two commercial cases: CloudWalk – An Exploration into the Application of AI Plus 5G Smart Banks. Biological recognition, AI and big data had accumulated enormous momentum for the transformation of traditional commercial banks, so smart banks inevitably came into being. Moreover, Professor Tang introduced an entirely new commercial model – the frontier off-premise virtual operation hall.

  After the seminar, Associate Dean Khong Yueng Wah, on behalf of the Faculty of Finance of City University of Macau, extended heartfelt thanks to Professor Tang for his special topic seminar and multifaceted support for the faculty. Professor Tang encouraged the students for master’s and doctoral degrees to take part in quantitative investment competitions and take the special training courses about the application of block chain by the Hengqin Innovative Financial Research Institute to provide considerable and substantial support for the training of financial technology talents in Macao and the mainland and in the Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area.