Hong Kong Commercial Data Interchange - Consent-Based Data Exchange Infrastructure

The Challenge

Financial institutions operate across multiple data sources when assessing creditworthiness, particularly for Small and Medium-sized Enterprises (SMEs). Accessing consistent and verifiable commercial data can be complex, often involving multiple data providers and varying data standards.

This environment creates operational challenges in data interoperability, verification processes, and coordination between institutions. There is a need for infrastructure that enables structured, consent-based data exchange while maintaining data integrity and governance.

The Solution

The Hong Kong Commercial Data Interchange (CDI) is designed as a consent-based data exchange infrastructure to support information sharing between financial institutions and data providers.

The system adopts a hub-and-spoke architecture, where participating entities connect through a common interchange rather than maintaining multiple bilateral integrations. This approach supports interoperability and reduces integration complexity.

The platform incorporates distributed data exchange principles, allowing data to remain with source providers while enabling controlled access through standardised interfaces. Consent mechanisms are embedded to manage data access permissions.

Emali was responsible for system architecture design, development, and implementation of cross-agency integration components, including interface design, service coordination, and data exchange frameworks.

The Impact

The CDI provides a structured framework for consent-based data exchange within the financial ecosystem.

For financial institutions, it supports more consistent access to external data sources and improves coordination across data providers.

For SMEs, it contributes to more streamlined data sharing processes when interacting with financial services.

More broadly, the platform demonstrates how consent-driven data exchange infrastructure can be implemented to support interoperability and data governance across institutional ecosystems.