A central bank has put the phrase “Know Your Agent” into an official programme. The Hong Kong Monetary Authority’s Project SAGE treats agent identity and delegated authority as a governance workstream, not a product feature.
What happened
On 2 November 2026 the Hong Kong Monetary Authority launched Project SAGE — “Securing Agentic Finance with Governance and Enablement” — to support practical agentic-finance applications “while ensuring governance framework is in place.” It established a cross-sectoral Agentic Finance Expert Group of financial institutions, technology service providers, professional services firms and academics to support the work.
The project has four stated areas:
- Market development and use case exploration — B2C (agentic commerce, everyday payments), B2B (procurement, treasury management) and M2M (usage-based payments for digital services).
- Agent identity — to “explore approaches to verifying A.I. agents’ identities and delegated authority, including Know Your Agent (KYA) practices and authentication mechanisms, to facilitate their trusted participation in financial activities.”
- Interoperability standards — industry discussion of standards and protocols for interaction across the agentic-finance ecosystem.
- Legal and regulatory frameworks — governance arrangements, liability and consumer protection.
Separately the same day, the HKMA published a discussion paper on the use of agentic AI by banks, “seeking industry feedback on the supervisory considerations pertaining to the governance of such applications.” The authority had already said in October, when it announced its ART framework for AI in banking, that the paper would explore “intent-anchored accountability, a registry of material A.I. agents, and effective intervention mechanisms.”
Eddie Yue, the HKMA’s chief executive, framed the programme as innovation with safeguards: agentic finance “has the potential to transform how financial services are delivered and utilised,” and the initiatives aim to “foster innovation while reinforcing Hong Kong’s leading role in next generation of financial technology.”
Why it matters for KYA
The vocabulary has reached a regulator. KYA has spent two years as vendor marketing and conference shorthand. A monetary authority naming “Know Your Agent practices” as a workstream — next to authentication mechanisms — is the moment the term acquires a supervisory audience. Expect “KYA” to start appearing in bank questionnaires.
Identity is paired with delegated authority. The workstream is not “can we authenticate an agent” but “can we verify its identity and delegated authority.” That is the correct pairing, and the harder half. Authentication tells a bank which software is calling; delegated authority tells it whether the customer, or the corporate, actually authorised this transaction within these limits.
It is a programme, not a rulebook. Project SAGE is enablement plus governance: use cases, an expert group, an interoperability conversation and a consultation paper. Nothing in the announcement sets requirements, thresholds or a timetable, and the expert group’s membership is advisory. Firms looking for a compliance answer will not find one yet — but the direction of travel is explicit.
The registry idea is still on the table. The October ART release listed “a registry of material A.I. agents” among the discussion paper’s topics, alongside intent-anchored accountability and intervention mechanisms. If a supervisor expects banks to enumerate the agents that act for them, the registry becomes the artefact against which “know your agent” is checked — the same conclusion vendors reached this week from the security side.
Interoperability is the cross-border question. An agent verified by one institution, acting for a customer at another, in a third jurisdiction, needs a shared answer to “who is this and who stands behind it.” Listing interoperability as its own workstream acknowledges that bilateral onboarding will not scale.
What to watch
The discussion paper’s feedback period and whether the HKMA publishes KYA criteria — what evidence a bank must hold about an agent’s principal, scope and revocation path — rather than only principles. Also whether Project SAGE use cases include third-party agents acting on customer accounts, which is where the identity problem stops being theoretical.
Sources
- HKMA, “HKMA launches Project SAGE and establishes Expert Group for agentic finance”, 2 November 2026 — hkma.gov.hk
- HKMA, “Hong Kong FinTech Week 2026” (discussion paper on agentic AI by banks), 2 November 2026 — hkma.gov.hk
- HKMA, “HKMA announces ‘ART’ Framework to promote responsible A.I. adoption”, 15 October 2026 — hkma.gov.hk
Know Your Agent (KYA) explains agent identity, verification and accountability. This is an explainer, not legal or compliance advice — see our Sources & methodology. New to KYA? Start with What is Know Your Agent? and the glossary.