Looking Back Looking Forward

HKU Crest mono shaded.png

HKU FinTech

Leading FinTech Research and Education in Asia

Online Education

Looking Back Looking Forward

Research Centres

Regulatory Ramblings

University Degrees

Innovation Labs

HKU Crest mono shaded.png

HKU FinTech

Leading FinTech Research and Education in Asia

Online Education

Looking Back Looking Forward

Research Centres

Regulatory Ramblings

University Degrees

Innovation Labs

Looking Back Looking Forward

Looking Back, Looking Forward (LBLF)

LBLF provides a concise and analytical discussion of issues relating to the intersection of finance, technology, regulation, globalization and sustainable development.

Led by Professor Douglas Arner, LBLF focuses on major current issues in global finance, presenting them in their wider context.

Topics include digitization and datafication of finance, major trends and themes in global finance and its regulation, and the role of finance in sustainable development.

LBLF goes out every month to over 100,000 learners on the HKU-edX Professional Certificate in FinTech.

Season 1 (2020)

Season 2 (2021)

Season 3 (2022)

Can cryptos avoid collapse through regulation?

Looking Back, Looking Forward

with Professor Douglas Arner | Ep.5

Move to Smartphone

In this episode of Looking Back Looking Forward, Professor Douglas Arner discusses the risks imposed upon digital assets and the impacts on financial services and markets. Algorithmic stablecoins, maintaining stability in value between digital tokens and the US dollar, have encountered volatile development at the expense of its investors. This requires regulatory measures to be put in place for enabling administrative backing on such stablecoins, which Professor Arner highlights several options available for ensuring investor security and market protection.

Where is FinTech Headed in 2022?

03:33

Where is FinTech Headed in 2022?

In this first episode of season three’s “Looking Back Looking Forward”, Professor Douglas Arner discusses the big issues relating to finance, technology and regulation for the new year. Topics expecting to make headway include asset pricing, potential financial crises, inflation, geopolitical issues and COVID-19. Crypto and digital assets, still causing concern by regulatory bodies, will continue to seek normalisation. Professor Arner also foresees central bank digital currencies and the Metaverse to rise among the topics for financial technology’s advancement in 2022.

How Do You Govern Data In Finance Across Borders?

05:15

How Do You Govern Data In Finance Across Borders?

In this episode of Looking Back Looking Forward, Professor Douglas Arner discusses data and its integration in the financial sector. In one of the world’s most digitised industries, datafication is at the core of finance. Professor Arner also shares on data governance’s influence on countries’ jurisdictions, including the challenges it may apply on financial services and economies. These topics, and more, are further examined in the newly published article “Financial Data Governance: The Datafication of Finance, the Rise of Open Banking and the End of the Data Centralization Paradigm (https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=4040604)” by Professor Arner, Giuliano Castellano and Eriks Selga. #data #finance #governance

What Are the Implications of Weaponising Finance?

07:39

What Are the Implications of Weaponising Finance?

In this episode of Looking Back Looking Forward, Professor Arner discusses the implications of weaponising finance, particularly in the case of the Russian-Ukrainian War. The digital infrastructure of finance, which connects countries to one another, is now being held amongst the developing crises in Ukraine. How can companies or individuals excluded from the international payment system combat such actions? Will a new monetary instrument be able to dominate existing major currencies? These questions and more are presented in the challenge digitisation is facing in the wake of the Russian-Ukraine War.

How Do We Make Finance Resilient To Crises?

06:00

How Do We Make Finance Resilient To Crises?

In this episode of Looking Back Looking Forward, Professor Douglas Arner underlines major sustainability crises and the potential finance, in particular digital finance, has to adapt to such global events. Could the digitisation of financial services be the foundation to protect economies and societies from such volatilities? Or will the standardisation of ethics prove to be the most critical factor? Watch to find out how finance can have certainty in uncertain times.