Hong Kong Monetary Authority launches Project SAGE to govern AI agents in finance
The HKMA opened Project SAGE on November 2, 2026, with an expert group and four work areas covering agent identity, standards, use cases and liability.
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The Hong Kong Monetary Authority launched Project SAGE on November 2, 2026, at Hong Kong FinTech Week, to support what it calls the responsible development and adoption of agentic finance in Hong Kong. SAGE stands for Securing Agentic Finance with Governance and Enablement. The authority also set up an Agentic Finance Expert Group of financial institutions, technology service providers, professional service firms and academics to support the work.
The project covers four areas. The first is market development and use-case exploration, where industry participants test agentic finance use cases and discuss practical implementation with the HKMA. The authority lists consumer-facing commerce and everyday payments, business uses such as procurement and treasury management, and machine-to-machine payments for digital services as possible areas.
The second area is agent identity. The HKMA said it will explore ways to verify an AI agent’s identity and the authority delegated to it, including Know Your Agent practices and authentication mechanisms, so agents can take part in financial activities on trusted terms. Know Your Agent extends the customer checks banks already run to software acting for a person or a company: which agent is acting, on whose authority, and within what limits.
The third area is interoperability, where the authority will host industry discussion of standards and protocols for secure interactions across the agentic finance ecosystem. The fourth covers legal and regulatory questions, including governance arrangements, liability and consumer protection.
Eddie Yue, Chief Executive of the HKMA, said: “Agentic finance has the potential to transform how financial services are delivered and utilised.” Yue said the initiatives aim to encourage innovation while making sure agentic finance serves users’ interests and safeguards financial stability.
The HKMA said agentic AI technologies are maturing and that the financial industry is moving beyond internal adoption to explore how AI agents can make financial services more efficient and secure. It said the associated risks and challenges need to be properly addressed.