RGC Senior Research Fellow Scheme

Biography

Kerry Holdings Professor in Law (since 2017), Director and co-founder of the Asian Institute of International Financial Law at The University of Hong Kong
Leads the development of Introduction to FinTech – launched with edX in May 2018 and now with over 80,000 learners spanning every country in the world
Advises on financial sector development projects around the world, as an advisor to the United Nations (UN), World Bank, Asian Development Bank, APEC, Alliance for Financial Inclusion and European Bank for Reconstruction and Development
SRFS project — to investigate how the global digital transformation of finance and its regulation, as well as the potential of FinTech and regulatory technology (RegTech) can – and more importantly, should – promote sustainable inclusive development, in terms of each of the UN’s 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs)
Awards and Honours:
- RGC Senior Research Fellow (2020)
- Finalist for edX Prize (2020)
- Outstanding Young Researcher Award (2007)

Project Title

Digital Finance, Financial Inclusion and Sustainability: Building Better Financial Systems

Award Citation

Douglas Arner is the Kerry Holdings Professor in Law and Director of the Asian Institute of International Financial Law at the University of Hong Kong, as well as the LLM in Compliance and Regulation, LLM in Corporate and Financial Law, and Law, Innovation, Technology and Entrepreneurship (LITE) Programmes. He served as Head of the HKU Department of Law from 2011 to 2014 and as Co-Director of the Duke University-HKU Asia-America Institute in Transnational Law from 2005 to 2016. Douglas has published eighteen books and more than 200 articles, chapters and reports on international financial law and regulation, most recently Reconceptualising Global Finance and its Regulation (Cambridge 2016) (with Ross Buckley and Emilios Avgouleas) and The RegTech Book (Wiley 2019) (with Janos Barberis and Ross Buckley). His recent papers are available on SSRN at https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/cf_dev/AbsByAuth.cfm?per_id=524849, where he is among the top 75 authors in the world by total downloads. Douglas led the development of Introduction to FinTech – launched with edX in May 2018 and now with over 80,000 learners spanning every country in the world. He is a Senior Visiting Fellow of Melbourne Law School, University of Melbourne, and an Advisory Board Member of the Centre for Finance, Technology and Entrepreneurship (CFTE). Douglas was an inaugural member of the Hong Kong Financial Services Development Council (2013-2019) and has served as a consultant with, among others, the United Nations, World Bank, Asian Development Bank, APEC, Alliance for Financial Inclusion, and European Bank for Reconstruction and Development. He has lectured, co-organised conferences and seminars and been involved with financial sector reform projects around the world. He has been a visiting professor or fellow at Duke, Harvard, the Hong Kong Institute for Monetary and Financial Research, IDC Herzliya, McGill, Melbourne, National University of Singapore, University of New South Wales, Shanghai University of Finance and Economics, and Zurich, among others.