On 15 October 2026 the Hong Kong Monetary Authority (HKMA) announced its ART framework for responsible AI in banking, named for Accountability, Resilience and Trust. It comes with a clear signal about where the industry is heading: in the second cohort of the HKMA’s GenAI Sandbox, more than 60% of the use cases tested involved agentic AI, meaning systems that take actions, not only answer questions.

What the HKMA is asking for

  • Clear ownership of every AI use case, and an up-to-date inventory of approved applications.
  • Oversight that moves from “human in the loop” to “human on the loop” for agentic AI: people do not approve every step, but they watch, set limits and can step in.
  • Mechanisms that allow effective intervention when an agent goes wrong.

A registry of material AI agents

The HKMA plans a discussion paper that is expected to cover intent-anchored accountability, a registry of material AI agents and ways to intervene. The registry is still a concept, not a supervisory requirement, and no publication date has been given. But the direction is clear: regulators want to know which agents a bank runs, what each is allowed to do and who answers for it.

The sandbox keeps growing

In March 2026 the sandbox was widened beyond banking as GenA.I. Sandbox++. Its first cohort, announced on 27 August, focuses on agentic AI: 36 use cases chosen from nearly 100 proposals, involving 30 financial institutions and 27 technology partners.

What lenders should prepare, wherever they are

  • A list of every AI agent and model in production, with an owner, a purpose and the data it can use.
  • Limits per agent: which actions it may take, which amounts, which customers.
  • Logs that show the input, output and reason for every agent action.
  • A way to pause or switch off an agent at once, without stopping the business.
  • Test runs on past cases before an agent goes live, and monitoring after.

In lendhero each AI agent is configured like a staff role, with its own permissions and owner, can be switched off in the admin panel, and logs every action, which is the kind of inventory and control Hong Kong is asking for.

Sources: HKMA press releases, FinTech Global, Fintech News Hong Kong, The Standard.

lendhero solutionResponsible AIHow lendhero keeps AI decisions explainable, logged and under human control.