According to a research note from Guotai Haitong Securities Co., Ltd., agents are now permeating various industries, increasingly functioning as the foundational infrastructure of the real world. This evolution is propelling the fintech sector into a new era of intelligence, unlocking substantial growth potential. The firm sees fresh investment opportunities emerging in fintech and recommends core companies positioned to benefit across several key segments: 1) Within financial IT, the widespread implementation of agents is driving system upgrade demands while large models enhance efficiency, with active market trading further heightening the urgency for upgrades to brokerage IT systems. 2) The outlook for intelligent investment research and advisory within the financial information services industry is promising, as differentiated and intelligent information offerings better cater to investor needs. 3) Agent-based payments are expected to shift the sector from mere transaction processing to intelligent business enablement.
Between 2026/8/22 and 2026/9/4, the fintech sector posted returns of 6.34%, while the Hong Kong fintech index gained 1.29%. Looking ahead, the policy and application groundwork for integrating AI with finance continues to strengthen, and AI application commercialization is entering a positive feedback loop. With strong willingness to pay and high data density in financial scenarios, the AI-plus-finance space remains one of the most pivotal arenas for AI adoption.
Agent-based payments have now adopted a self-regulatory convention, and channels for securities trading and fund subscription-redemption are expanding. In the financial IT sphere, brokerage trading systems are undergoing upgrades, and Zhipu has launched GLMCoding Plan subscription packages on Tmall, signaling a shift toward mass-market retail distribution of large-model tokens. Concurrently, the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology has initiated an AI application service provider cultivation campaign. In financial information services, Tencent WorkBuddy's finance edition has gone live, Hangzhou's "15th Five-Year Plan" for finance has pinpointed the "AI+Finance" direction, and platforms for securities education and fund subscription-redemption transfers have been registered with the China Securities Regulatory Commission.
In consumer finance, the "Token loan" product has expanded from Guangzhou to multiple regions, accelerating scenario-based financial innovation across the AI industry chain. For third-party payments, the Payment and Clearing Association has issued the "Self-Regulatory Convention on Agent Payment Applications," while a deputy governor of the central bank underscored the critical role of payment infrastructure, with institutional agent-payment deployments picking up pace simultaneously.
At the individual stock level, AI ecosystem positioning is speeding up amidst a wave of dividend distributions and buybacks following the mid-year reporting season. On the news front, Alibaba plans a private placement of approximately HKD 80 billion to bolster its AI infrastructure, LAKALA has received approval for executive changes, and the Miaoxiang Financial Zone of East Money has made its debut on Tencent WorkBuddy. Meanwhile, Yusys Technologies is collaborating on a financial computing token factory project. On the announcement side, HUNDSUN Technologies reported a year-on-year increase of 8.37% in non-GAAP net profit, along with interim dividends and equity incentives, while Lakala Payment has declared its first interim dividend with overseas gross payment volume surging 293.8% year-on-year. JF SmartInvest Holdings and Bairong Intelligent are both executing active share buybacks.
Key risks include the potential for AI model application failures, risks of agent execution deviating from established protocols, and market volatility.