Hello, welcome to Emlex, and welcome to the latest in our ongoing series of podcasts.

I'm David Plott, Emlex's managing editor for Asia.

We're coming to you today from our bureau here in Hong Kong.

A couple of developments here in the past week have put Hong Kong firmly on the map in the fast-moving world of financial technology.

First, there was a big get-together of financial innovators from all over the world.

Hong Kong FinTech Week this year attracted more than 10 times as many people as it did in 2016, a clear sign of

the growing momentum in this rapidly developing sector.

And second came perhaps the crowning moment of Fintech Week here in Hong Kong, an agreement

between Hong Kong and Singapore, two of the region's preeminent finance hubs to collaborate on developing

the fintech industry. All this is part of a growing global buzz around innovation in the

finance sector. And here with me now to talk about it is MLEX correspondent Sereng Namgaal. Welcome to

this podcast, Sering. Thank you, David.

Serring, technological innovation has proved to be highly disruptive in sectors such as the media,

taxis, and retail in recent years. And now it's turning heads in the finance sector. What exactly

is fintech and why is it important?

FinTech is a very broad area. It can include everything from mobile payments in

countries such as Kenya to crowdfunding in China to the use of distributed ledger, also known

as blockchain by stock exchanges such as NASDAQ.

The root of the innovation in the sector probably goes back to the financial crisis we had in 2007 and 2008 10 years ago.

And the banking sector, we all know, has had a very bad PR since the financial crisis,

and this has led to a general erosion of trust

for both the big banks and the regulators and the decline in trust for what was once considered

...