Seoul City to hold investor briefing in Silicon Valley

A poster for the Seoul Finance Conference and Fintech Startup Pitch Event [SEOUL METROPOLITAN GOVERNMENT]

Seoul City is holding an investor briefing in Silicon Valley in the United States to provide insight into new businesses and investment opportunities in the Korean capital.

The Seoul Metropolitan Government announced Sunday that it will host “Seoul Finance Conference and Fintech Startup Pitch Event” at 2 p.m. Tuesday at Kotra Silicon Valley in California. The event is being co-hosted by the Financial Supervisory Service (FSS) and Kotra Silicon Valley to boost overseas investment.

The event will be divided into two sessions. In the first session, the FSS and Seoul’s investment promotion agency Invest Seoul will give a presentation on the capital city’s finance businesses and investment opportunities.

The FSS will first explain the finance and investment environment of Korea, the strengths of the country’s fintech and deregulation policies supported by the agency. The FSS will also introduce the financial regulatory sandbox system, or temporary exemption or suspension of regulations in financial services while they are being tested in the market, which has been in effect since 2019.

Invest Seoul will then give a presentation about the financial environment and policies of Seoul as an Asian financial hub. The agency will promote its various incentive programs for foreign investors, such as cash support and employment subsidies, as well as the provision of office space in the International Finance Centre in the heart of the Yeouido business district in Seoul.

After the presentation, selected fintech startups from Seoul pitch their technologies and services to foreign investors. Four companies — Aiji Net (an AI-based insurance fintech company), Spiceware (a cloud-native privacy protection service provider), Horizon Technologies (an analysis engine providing visual reports of stock investment and analysis on investment index) and AIZEN Global (an AI credit facilitator connecting data economy platforms with bank partners) — were selected by the city government after open recruitment in July.

Thirty investors applied to participate in the event on-site, and about 20 investors will also attend online.

Following the Silicon Valley investor briefing, Invest Seoul will host another investor briefing on Sept. 20 in Seoul and invite two Saudi sovereign wealth funds to showcase the city's startups. In November, Seoul City will attend and run a Seoul Pavilion at the Singapore FinTech Festival, which is the world’s largest FinTech event.

“We will resume overseas investment attraction activities that had been suspended due to the Covid pandemic and meet [foreign] investors and companies in person and actively engage in Seoul sales,” said Hwang Bo-yeon, chief of the Economic Policy Office under the city government.

BY SEO JI-EUN [seo.jieun1@joongang.co.kr]