Hong Kong’s banking regulator has begun work on how AI agents should operate in finance. It has not yet set any rules. On 2 November the Hong Kong Monetary Authority launched Project SAGE, short for “Securing Agentic Finance with Governance and Enablement”. It also set up an Agentic Finance Expert Group drawn from financial institutions, technology providers, professional service firms and academia.
The HKMA says agentic AI is maturing and the industry is moving beyond internal use, and that the risks and challenges need to be properly addressed.
The project has four parts. The first covers use cases, with examples including agentic commerce and everyday payments, business to business procurement and treasury management, and machine to machine payments for digital services. The second covers agent identity, including “Know Your Agent” practices and ways to check what an agent has been authorised to do. The third covers interoperability standards. The fourth covers legal and regulatory frameworks: governance, liability and consumer protection.
Identity and liability are where the commercial stakes sit. Today a bank checks who its customer is. Once an agent starts a payment, the bank also has to know which agent it is, who authorised it and how far that authority goes. When the payment goes wrong, someone carries the loss. SAGE puts both questions on the regulator’s list.
The answers are not there yet. The release sets no rules, issues no guidance and gives no deadlines, deliverables or duration. Members of the Expert Group are named in an annex, not in the release itself.
Eddie Yue, Chief Executive of the HKMA, said: “Agentic finance has the potential to transform how financial services are delivered and utilised.” He added that the initiatives “will help us navigate the opportunities and challenges ahead, ensuring that agentic finance serves the best interests of users while safeguarding the stability of our financial system.”
Digital Trade Outlook’s View: Rules Are Coming, Liability Sits With Banks Until Then
Hong Kong has signalled that agent identity and liability will be regulated. Until rules arrive, banks offering agent-driven payments set their own terms on identity and liability and carry the consequences. Members of the Expert Group get a say in how the rules are written. For corporate treasury and procurement, the use cases are named but no timetable is set.
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Image: Hong Kong Monetary Authority logo