Hong Kong’s first AI-driven RegTech Innovation Lab, co-incubated by HKSTP and AWS, is redefining how compliance is managed
Hong Kong’s first Regtech Innovation Lab was unveiled at FinTech Week 2025, developed in partnership by FCC Analytics, Amazon Web Services (AWS) and the Hong Kong Science and Technology Parks Corporation (HKSTP).
The Lab is spearheaded by FCC Analytics, an HKSTP-backed start-up that has become a showcase for the park’s co-incubation programme.
The programme accelerates innovation from pilot to impact by bringing together deep-tech start-ups, global cloud leaders such as AWS, and regulated financial institutions to turn complex challenges into scalable, co-created solutions – a collaboration that led to the launch of the Regtech Innovation Lab.
At Hong Kong FinTech Week 2025, HKSTP facilitated around 150 business matchings and showcased 20 park companies. The event also saw FCC Analytics, Futu Securities, HashKey Digital Asset Group and Livi Bank sign an MoU to establish the locally based Regtech Innovation Lab.
This collaboration reflects HKSTP’s end-to-end incubation approach, which focuses on delivering tangible business outcomes. Its Incubation Programme is built around four core FUEL pillars – Follow (continuous guidance), Upskill (capability building), Expose (market exposure) and Link (resource connection).
The programme takes start-ups from concept through development, trials, fundraising and commercialisation.
The Regtech Innovation Lab enables banks, brokers and virtual-asset platforms to deploy and test AI tools for anti-money-laundering (AML) and know-your-customer (KYC) monitoring within a secure cloud environment.
Early trials indicate that the system can cut false alerts by up to 60 per cent, easing one of the financial sector’s costliest pain points and marking a key milestone in Hong Kong’s push to lead in responsible AI for finance.
“Banks can spend 30 minutes on a single false alert, and 80 to 90 per cent of alerts turn out to be non-issues. Our mission is to let AI handle the noise so people can focus on real risk,” said Rico Tang, chief corporate development officer of FCC Analytics.
FCC Analytics was founded by a group of data science and risk management specialists who saw that even the most advanced institutions struggled with alert overload.
The platform uses machine learning models trained on real transaction data to rank alerts by probability and context, so that compliance teams can quickly flag and address genuine threats.
To scale this technology across regulated institutions, engineering excellence alone is not enough; it also requires a trusted and transparent place to test it. That’s where HKSTP and AWS enter the picture.
“Hong Kong’s role as a magnet for international capital and technology is built on passion and perseverance,” said Eric Or, chief ecosystem development officer at HKSTP. “We are committed to connecting innovation with every investment opportunity.”
Through HKSTP’s co-incubation framework with AWS, selected start-ups receive cloud-computing credits, technical mentorship and access to enterprise partners.
Derek Chim, HKSTP’s head of start-up ecosystem and development, said the model connects innovation with implementation. This success, he said, had been driven in part by the FUEL framework.
Under ‘Follow’, the HKSTP team engaged AWS’s ecosystem to secure additional resources, such as proof-of-concept cloud credits for data testing, while managers from both organisations supported FCC Analytics through implementation.
For ‘Upskill’, AWS offered technical advisory that helped FCC Analytics apply tools such as SageMaker and Bedrock in product development, moving the solution from concept to pilot and ultimately to scalable deployment.
“Co-incubation brings together the best of three worlds – start-up speed, corporate governance and cloud resilience,” said Chim. “AWS provides secure infrastructure, while HKSTP connects innovators like FCC with banks, giving new solutions a reliable testing ground.”
Within the Regtech Innovation Lab, banks can run FCC’s AI models on AWS SageMaker inside a protected sandbox, avoiding the cost of building an AI set-up from the ground up.
“In a tokenised and data-driven economy, trust is everything. Our AI does more than flag suspicious activity; it helps institutions show regulators that their controls are intelligent, explainable and adaptive,” said Wallace Chow, FCC Analytics’ co-founder and chief executive.
Initial roll-outs focus on Hong Kong-based banks, brokers and virtual asset firms that aim to meet global AML and KYC standards. Data stays within each client’s own environment, while model training takes place inside its secure cloud instance, according to Chow.
He explained: “We never move customer data outside their perimeter. Our software-as-a-service runs where the data resides. That is how we build trust with regulated firms.”
Chim described the AWS × HKSTP co-incubation model as a pattern that could be applied to other high-impact sectors as well. “As we work with global tech leaders, we help local innovation progress more quickly and give start-ups a pathway to international markets,” he said.
For FCC Analytics, the gains are already visible. The firm now supports clients in Singapore and Australia, taking its Hong Kong-proven platform into new markets.
AWS engineers conduct architecture reviews, while HKSTP co-ordinates discussions with the Hong Kong Monetary Authority and the Securities and Futures Commission, according to Tang.
By showing that AI can be run securely, transparently and in partnership with industry, the Regtech Innovation Lab strengthens Hong Kong’s position as a regional centre for regulatory technology.
The success of the Regtech Innovation Lab reinforces the value of the FUEL framework and shows how structured incubation can turn early concepts into solutions ready for the market.
