Boardroom bridges: the impact of directors’ overseas experience on firm-level FinTech adoption

Purpose This study aims to examine how board directors’ overseas experience affects financial technology (FinTech) adoption in Chinese financial firms. Directors’ overseas experience is shown to enhance firm-level FinTech, particularly its technological application, with the effect operating through both independent and non-independent directors. The findings highlight the strategic value of overseas experienced directors in fostering financial innovation under the dual pressures of state-led regulation and BigTech competition. Design/methodology/approach The authors construct a panel of 1,152 firm-year observations from 132 Chinese listed financial firms over 2008–2023. A firm-level FinTech index is built from text mining of annual reports and decomposed into technological-application and business-innovation sub-indices. Two-way fixed-effects regressions form the baseline specification, with Heckman selection models and propensity-score matching addressing self-selection and sample-composition concerns. Construct validity of the text-based index is assessed against audited software-asset holdings. Cross-sectional analyses explore boundary conditions related to governance, firm size, institutional holdings and ownership type. Findings Directors’ overseas experience significantly enhances firm-level FinTech adoption, particularly in technological applications like AI and blockchain. The positive association holds for both independent and non-independent directors. Cross-sectional tests show the effect is larger in firms with stronger internal governance, greater scale, higher institutional ownership and state-ownership status. Research limitations/implications For firms, nominating committees of financial institutions can treat directors’ overseas experience as a measurable element of board human capital, particularly when evaluating candidates for firms characterized by stronger corporate governance structures, larger asset size, higher institutional ownership and state ownership. For boards, the findings suggest that independent and non-independent directors contribute through complementary channels. Practical implications For firms, appointing directors with overseas experience strategically enhances FinTech capability. For policymakers, it validates talent attraction programs as effective tools for fostering national financial technology innovation and competitiveness. Social implications The research suggests that leveraging globally experienced talent can accelerate financial inclusion and technological advancement, potentially improving access to and efficiency of financial services for broader segments of society. Originality/value The study provides new evidence on an underexplored link between board directors’ overseas experience and firm-level FinTech adoption in a regulated financial setting. On measurement, the authors construct a firm-year text-based FinTech index from audited annual reports and validate it against an audited balance-sheet measure of software-asset holdings, addressing concerns about whether text-based proxies capture adoption rather than disclosure intensity. On scope, the authors extend the literature on directors’ overseas experience into the FinTech setting in regulated financial institutions, and document an asymmetric pattern across the technology-application and business-model-innovation dimensions that prior work has not examined. In addition, by showing that the effect is conditional on organizational complementarities, the findings support a more nuanced view of how directors’ overseas experience translates into firm-level FinTech adoption.