The Financial Innovations for Business Discussion Forum is a regular expert platform of the HSE Graduate School of Business that brings together business, infrastructure, and experts for practical reflection on new financial market instruments. The forum is held by the Department of Financial Management of the HSE Graduate School of Business in the format of an open discussion involving leading market operators and participants.
The forum's central mission is to make complex financial innovations understandable, legally transparent, and commercially applicable for Russian business. The discussions focus on: digital financial assets, asset tokenisation, crowdfunding, smart contracts, and other technologies that expand companies' opportunities for raising financing, managing capital, and conducting efficient transactions.
Digital financial assets have become the forum's first cross-cutting theme—not a one-off topic for discussion, but a systemic area that is consistently developed at every event. The market is visibly moving from theoretical constructs to substantive professional discussion to practical mechanisms of issuance, accounting, tax support, product hypotheses, and corporate application of tokenised instruments. This topic remains a permanent working agenda of the forum, reflecting the dynamics of the market itself and its regulation, as well as accumulating market experience.
Over the course of its existence, the forum has brought together hundreds of participants from leading financial institutions, technology companies, regulators, and the academic community, becoming a notable event in the industry calendar. Expert discussions have consistently developed from event to event and formed a stable professional environment in which practitioners develop common approaches to the development of digital financial instruments. The platform has established itself as an institutional mechanism of communication between infrastructure, investors, issuers, consultants, and researchers: the materials and outcomes of discussions are reflected in legislative initiatives, subordinate regulations, and industry standards.
Participants note the forum's unique format: unlike most industry conferences, ready-made solutions are not declared here—instead, answers are sought jointly to genuinely difficult questions on which the market has not yet reached a consensus. Incisive panel discussions give each speaker the opportunity to speak out on a wide range of issues, and questions from the audience invariably 'raise the temperature' of each session. According to the participants, this is a rare case when the format allows for discussion of strategic matters without losing a concrete focus—professionals openly discuss both risks and prospects, which builds genuine trust in the market. It is precisely such platforms that form expert consensus on development directions—especially at turning points when the regulatory environment is changing fundamentally. The results of panel discussions are carefully analysed by HSE University's Graduate School of Business and are incorporated into the university's research projects in the field of digital finance.
Information support for the forum is provided by leading news agencies and specialised portals for the digital asset market.
Below you can find reports, analytical materials, presentations, and video recordings from past forums. We invite researchers, lawyers, financiers, and entrepreneurs interested in the development of the digital economy to join the professional community that is shaping the practical future of Russia's financial market.
Past Events (in Russian)
