Last year, trading by international 2/5  BIS central bankers' speeches  investors through Stock Connect more than doubled compared to the year before; and trading through Bond Connect nearly tripled. 17. And the best is yet to come. Take Bond Connect as an example. Last Thursday, FTSE Russell decided to add Chinese government bonds to its World Government Bond Index from October 2021, on the back of increasing international demand for Chinese fixed income products. This latest move, together with similar steps taken by other major global bond indices earlier, will create huge headroom for Bond Connect to grow. Volume aside, the HKMA is continuously working with the industry and our Mainland counterparts to enhance the scheme through improving trading efficiency, and exploring new products, such as repo and related derivatives, that will help market participants better manage liquidity and risk in bond investment. 18. We also need the right infrastructure to support these rapid developments. The HKMA has already started a multi-year project to revamp the Central Moneymarkets Unit. This will include a number of new services related to Bond Connect to meet the existing dynamic market demand and to position ourselves for the potential Southbound Bond Connect in the future. 19. Closer to home in our own Greater Bay Area, we are looking forward to welcoming a new member to the Connect Family. In June this year, together with our counterparts in the Mainland and Macao, we announced plans for a third two-way cross-boundary scheme: the Wealth Management Connect.
As a regulator, we are pleased to witness the progress made by the industry in using Regtech to combat longstanding issues – for instance, Natural Language Processing has been adopted to control conduct risk associated with the marketing of financial products, while Supervised Machine Learning can be deployed to more accurately help AML analysts flag suspicious transactions. 14. Understanding and facilitating the technology needs of the industry improves our own setting of supervisory priorities in a forward-looking manner. The HKMA’s three-year roadmap for Suptech adoption has identified, as key areas of focus, the need for a knowledge management system to handle structured and unstructured information, and the need for capabilities to analyse granular data. The aim is to make our supervisory work more effective without placing unnecessary burdens on banks. We have begun pilot projects to assess the suitability of various solutions. Cross-border banking 15. Technology has enhanced the use of our natural geographic advantage to participate in another major transformation: the growing interaction with the Mainland financial markets, particularly in relation to the Greater Bay Area. 16. As a leading international financial centre, Hong Kong has a long and successful history of serving as a gateway to the Mainland markets. We are the world’s largest offshore hub for renminbi business. Schemes launched in recent years, such as Stock Connect and Bond Connect, have expanded opportunities for investors.