The Pulse
HKMA Launches Project SAGE to Govern Financial AI Agents
Hong Kong’s monetary authority has launched Project SAGE, an initiative to explore uses of agentic finance and discuss identity, interoperability and regulatory questions. The project includes an expert group and comes alongside a discussio
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The Hong Kong Monetary Authority (HKMA) launched Project SAGE on 2 November to support the responsible development and adoption of agentic finance in Hong Kong. The project will explore practical applications while considering governance, as financial firms look at how artificial intelligence agents might make financial services more efficient and secure.
SAGE stands for Securing Agentic Finance with Governance and Enablement. The HKMA has set out four areas of work: exploring market development and use cases; discussing approaches to agent identity; facilitating discussion of interoperability topics; and exchanging views on legal and regulatory frameworks. The announcement describes these as areas for exploration and discussion.
HKMA Chief Executive Eddie Yue said:
Agentic finance has the potential to transform how financial services are delivered and utilised.
Eddie Yue, Chief Executive of the Hong Kong Monetary Authority
Use cases under exploration
The HKMA lists potential applications across consumer, business and machine-to-machine settings. Consumer-facing examples include agentic commerce and everyday payments. Business-to-business possibilities include procurement and treasury management, while machine-to-machine examples include usage-based payments for digital services. The authority says the project will support industry participants and their partners in exploring and validating use cases and solutions, and facilitate dialogue about practical implementation considerations and challenges.
Identity, interoperability and regulation
For agent identity, the HKMA says it will explore ways to verify agents’ identities and delegated authority. The announcement names Know Your Agent practices and authentication mechanisms as topics, with the aim of facilitating trusted participation in financial activities.
On interoperability, the project will facilitate industry discussion of relevant standards and protocols to support secure interactions across the agentic finance ecosystem. The HKMA also plans to exchange views on legal and regulatory considerations, including governance arrangements, liability and consumer protection. The announcement outlines these as issues for discussion; it does not set out a specific identity system or interoperability standard.
Expert group and supervisory feedback
The HKMA has established an Agentic Finance Expert Group to support SAGE. Its members include financial institutions, technology service providers, professional-services firms and academia. The published list includes Bank of China (Hong Kong), Standard Chartered Bank (Hong Kong), HSBC, Visa Hong Kong and WeChat Pay Hong Kong among financial institutions. Amazon Web Services, Google Cloud, Tencent Cloud and Animoca Brands are among the technology service providers. Clifford Chance and PwC are listed among professional-services firms, and Professor Allen Huang of HKUST Business School is the academic member named in the annex.
Separately, the HKMA said it published a discussion paper on banks’ use of agentic AI, seeking industry feedback on supervisory considerations related to governance. That paper accompanies the project’s exploratory work; the SAGE announcement itself focuses on potential applications, areas for industry discussion and the expert group supporting the initiative.