Ramping up the credibility of the emerging financial technology industry another notch, The Monetary Authority of Singapore has announced the inaugural Fintech Festival.
The Singapore regulator has been keen to stay ahead of the fintech curve and has now organised in partnership with the Association of Banks in Singapore (ABS), a week-long festival, the first of its kind in Asia,which will bring together a series of distinct, back-to-back fintech events.
The Festival will provide a platform for collaborations, connections and co-creations within the FinTech ecosystem in Singapore and around the region.
New York Launch
Deputy Prime Minister and Chairman of MAS, Tharman Shanmugaratnam, launched the FinTech Festival at a Singapore fintech roadshow in New York City. The event was attended by more than 200 members of the fintech community, including bank and investment executives, fintech start-ups, technology experts, and innovation practitioners. New York is the first city in a series of global outreach initiatives that the MAS is conducting to draw the attention of the global fintech community to the possibilities for innovation and collaboration that Singapore’s growing fintech ecosystem offers.
The Singapore FinTech Festival will comprise three components:
Global FinTech Hackcelerator – In May 2016, the global fintech community will be invited to ideate and co-create solutions to specific problems or challenges solicited from the financial industry. Up to 20 teams will then be selected from across the world to develop market-ready solutions to these problems over the following months. The selected teams will present their completed solutions at the Demo Day during the Festival.
Support will be provided to the teams to develop their solutions, including up to S$550,000 worth of prizes, a network of mentors from MAS and the industry, and software infrastructure to develop market-ready solutions for industry problems that they will showcase at a demo-day during the Festival.
MAS FinTech Awards – The Awards will recognise innovative fintech solutions that have been implemented by fintech start-ups, financial institutions, and technology companies.
Conferences and Events – The Festival will include the MAS FinTech Conference, ABS-MAS Tech Risk Conference, ABS-MAS Regulation Technology (RegTech) Forum. The Festival will also feature other community and networking activities like the Innovation Lab Crawl, the SGX Bull Charge Charity Run.
«Technology will fundamentally transform the financial industry. The Singapore Fintech Festival will offer a conducive environment for fintech players, both within and outside the financial industry, to exchange ideas and forge partnerships that will nurture a thriving fintech ecosystem in Singapore,» said Ravi Menon, Managing Director, MAS.
