Description

About the Seminar

Dr Emily Lee’s presentation will focus on the connection between financial inclusion and digital financial inclusion as it assesses the role of virtual banks in Hong Kong’s financial inclusion agenda because this connection may be key to virtual banks’ success. Given that virtual banks are incorporated in and will operate from Hong Kong, a small market that has long been dominated by traditional banks, including those five designated by the Hong Kong Monetary Authority as domestic systemically important banks (D-SIBs) in December 2021, virtual banks may not be able to provide complete financial inclusion for two reasons. First, under Hong Kong’s current legal regime, virtual banks are, in general, subject to the same legal requirements as traditional banks, which prompts the question of whether and how this might hinder digital financial inclusion. This seminar will examine why Hong Kong’s inflexible capital requirement, unclear demands on digital banking innovation (as compared to those demands imposed by the Monetary Authority of Singapore on Singapore’s digital banks), and outdated laws against technical risks may render its financial inclusion policy less effective. Second, limitations inherent in the business models of virtual banks can also hinder digital financial inclusion.

About the Speaker

Emily Lee (LLB, LLM, PhD) is the Director of the Asian Institute of International Financial Law (AIIFL) and Associate Professor at the Faculty of Law of the University of Hong Kong. Her research interests are in the fields of financial law, FinTech regulations and policies, corporate insolvency law, cross-border insolvency law and comparative law. Her research work has been published by leading peer-reviewed journals such as the American Journal of Comparative Law, Law and Contemporary Problems, Journal of Corporate Law Studies, Journal of Business Law and Common Law World Review. Her work has been cited by McKinsey & Company’s McKinsey Global Institute, the Financial Services Development Council (a high-level, cross-sectoral advisory body established by the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region Government), a former US bankruptcy judge and academics, among others. She is also a member of the United Nations Commission on International Trade Law (UNCITRAL)’s expert group.

About the Moderator

Dr Sandra Booysen is an Associate Professor at the National University of Singapore, deputy-director of the Centre for Banking and Finance Law (CBFL), and serves on the editorial board of two academic journals: Singapore Journal of Legal Studies, the journal of NUS Law, and International Banking and Securities Law, published by Brill.

Sandra’s research interests straddle contract and banking law and she has published her work in a variety of international journals, including the Journal of Business Law (UK), Lloyd’s Maritime and Commercial Law Quarterly (UK), the Banking and Finance Law Review (Canada), the Journal of Contract Law (Australia) and the Singapore Journal of Legal Studies (Singapore). In 2017, Sandra co-edited a volume entitled Can Banks Still Keep a Secret? Bank Secrecy in Financial Centres Around the World which was published by Cambridge University Press and was the culmination of a research project funded by CBFL. She is currently engaged in a research project that is examining the problem of mis-selling investments to retail investors as revealed by the global financial crisis, and the ways in which jurisdictions have responded to the problem.

Prior to joining academia, Sandra practiced law in London and Johannesburg, with a focus on commercial litigation. She is admitted as a solicitor in England and Wales, and as an attorney in South Africa. Sandra is a graduate from Rhodes University, South Africa, where she completed an arts degree, and the University of the Witwatersrand, South Africa, where she completed her law degree. After moving to Singapore, Sandra pursued a Masters of Law degree, followed by her doctoral studies at the National University of Singapore.