The Stock Exchange of Hong Kong (SEHK) recently stated that it started looking at emerging technologies including blockchain for its next-generation clearing and settlement system last year.

SEHK chief executive Charles Li made the statements at the Annual Media Luncheon, CoinDesk reported. He said that over the course of next three to four years, SEHK will be significantly upgrading most areas of its post-trade infrastructure.

“Our Next Generation Clearing initiative is more than a refresh of existing technology. We aim to make significant enhancement in technology, risk models and business processes in this upgrade.

“In 2016 we started to look at the role new technologies (such as cloud computing and distributed ledger) can play in our future development and this will continue in 2017 when we will determine our NextGen roadmap.”

Hong Kong, in general, started looking at blockchain technology last year. The Hong Kong Monetary Authority (HKMA), in partnership with the Hong Kong Applied Science and Technology Research Institute (ASTRI), published a white paper on distributed ledger technology.

Reports also suggested that the Fintech Facilitation Office (FFO) of the HKMA, in collaboration with the ASTRI, will launch the “HKMA-ASTRI Fintech Innovation Hub” – a new facility to support research and adoption of fintech by the industry. The hub is intended to support various kinds of activities, including testing solutions which require the participation of multi-parties, such as fintech solutions that try to utilise the blockchain or distributed ledger technology in supporting cross-banks financial services.