The Digital Hub in Hong Kong is the latest addition to UBS’s digital centres around the world.

It is a space for clients and prospects to engage, network, and share knowledge with tech start-ups and experts. It is a forum in which they can explore the technologies that, increasingly, are becoming central to their businesses and personal lives.

Situated in our Kowloon office, the Digital Hub has hosted over 500 visitors since its inception in June this year. It is designed to:

• Help clients and prospects to explore how technologies are affecting their industry.
• Bring clients and startups closer together to forge collaborations.
• Build deeper engagement with clients and prospects around technology.
• Explore cutting-edge technologies to identify opportunities and address challenges faced by UBS.
• Support Hong Kong’s drive to become a center of technological excellence

Digital Hub initiatives

The Digital Hub has held a range of client and internal events, such as:

• Client tours: Exploring how technologies may affect their businesses
• Industry Tech events: Half day events focusing on technology in key client industries
• Funtech events: Showcasing how innovation affects business and daily lives.
• Startup speed dating: Bringing together clients and startups around key topics or deal stages Collaboration with HKX

In June, UBS announced its collaboration with Hong Kong X-Tech Startup Platform (HKX), a startup organization co-founded by Mr. Neil Shen of Sequoia Capital China, Prof. Zexiang Li of Hong Kong University of Science and Technology and Prof. Guanhua Chen of The University of Hong Kong, to:

• Provide a platform for engagement, networking and knowledge sharing amongst the business community, and the tech start-up ecosystem;
• Raise awareness amongst entrepreneurs in understanding the potential of technology innovation advancements and solutions in their businesses to address commercial challenges;
• Promote Hong Kong as a centre of technology innovation excellence by supporting the development of start-ups in Hong Kong.

UBS and innovation

For UBS, innovation and digitalization are key strategic priorities and we are investing heavily into those areas. Our efforts include driving the development and integration of new technologies into our existing business model, organizing challenges and competitions to encourage innovative thinking, and investing in market research to understand what tomorrow’s clients will expect from us.

Innovation centers:

UBS currently has over 40 projects in its innovation portfolio, spanning across themes such as client experience, language processing, data analytics, block chain and artificial intelligence. To date, we have activated the following labs and hubs around the world to engage with the Fintech ecosystem and explore local trends in our key markets:

• UBS Innovation Lab in Zurich
• UBS Innovation Lab at in London
• EVOLVE – UBS Centre for Design Thinking & Innovation in Singapore
• UBS Digital Hub in Hong Kong

Innovation challenge/ competition:

Following its success in 2015, UBS launched another Future of Finance Challenge (FoF) in second quarter 2017. The competition invites the world’s emerging and established Fintechs to showcase innovation that can transform the world of finance and banking, giving them a chance to win prizes and funding of up to US$200,000, as well as support for technologies that best address our four challenges: Digital Ecosystem, RegTech and LegalTech, Investment Banking 4.0 and Wealth in the Digital Age.

This year, the UBS FoF Challenge for Asia was held in Hong Kong, and from the nine finalists, we have chosen to work with six fintechs going into 2018. Visit https://www.ubs.com/microsites/future-of-finance-challenge/en/home.html to learn more.