Hong Kong needs to nurture insurance talent to rival Singapore and Dubai, CEOs say

Hong Kong must grow and nurture its pool of talent in the insurance industry to compete with other financial centres like Singapore and Dubai as businesses become increasingly digitalised, executives said.

Edward Moncreiffe, the CEO of global insurance at HSBC, said the city should focus on improving its physical and digital infrastructure, regulation and language skills if it wants to remain a global financial centre.

This will ensure people with good services can come in and do business in Hong Kong with less friction than anywhere else,” he said at the Insurtech Insights Asia conference on Wednesday. “Geographies are less valuable in the world where everything’s digitised.”

On the importance of English, Moncreiffe noted that while mainland Chinese customers account for a substantial amount of HSBC’s business, the bank is also writing policies to customers in Hong Kong from dozens of other nations.

The two-day conference is the largest gathering of top insurance executives in the region.