Hong Kong’s Securities and Futures Commission has identified human accountability, investor protection and operational resilience as central supervisory priorities after its first large-firm survey found growing use of artificial intelligence across financial businesses.
The survey covered 20 large firms with 78 affiliated licensed corporations. Thirty per cent of the firms reported using agentic AI in business operations, while another 25% were piloting it. Ninety per cent had connected AI tools to internal systems, and 95% expected their use of AI to accelerate over the next year.
Those figures describe a significant sample, not the market as a whole. The participating firms’ affiliates accounted for more than 75% of reported securities transactions during the six months to 30 June 2026, but the SFC cautioned that responses were self-reported, were not independent assessments of control effectiveness and should not be treated as representative of every licensed corporation.
The regulator says its supervision will focus on four areas: investor protection; cybersecurity and operational resilience; governance with clear human responsibility; and the development of knowledge and capability. It expects controls to match the authority and potential impact of an AI application. Human oversight need not mean manual approval of every output, but firms should define permitted actions, monitor activity and retain an effective ability to intervene.
The findings are supervisory evidence, not a new rule or an enforcement decision. They will inform the SFC’s next steps as more autonomous systems move from pilots into production. The official release and survey findings were published on 2 November 2026.
