The Monetary Authority of Singapore’s chief Chia Der Jiun spoke about the «larger purpose» that tech and innovation must serve as well as the top challenges in fintech.
In a «Caixin Global» interview with Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS) managing director Chia Der Jiun, the regulatory chief spoke about various topics including opportunities and challenges in the city-state’s fintech industry.
Beyond transforming financial services, he spoke about economic opportunities and improving people’s lives with fintech. For example, investments in digital infrastructure like «Myinfo» – a government-initiated personal data management platform for citizens and residents – helped streamline customer due diligence and improve the onboarding experience. Removing the need for physical branch visits was particularly relevant during the pandemic.
«Staying at the core of our fintech agenda is our conviction that technology and innovation must serve a larger purpose,» Chia said.
Top Challenges
On the top challenges moving forward, Chia underlined efforts in payments, sustainability and artificial intelligence (AI).
On payments, he spoke about improving speed, cost and reach with plans to pilot cross-border e-CNY linkages between China and Singapore. He mentioned the need for quality data to drive sustainability, highlighting the launch of ESG data infrastructure Gprnt, to facilitate information flow between the financial sector and real economy. And on AI, he stressed that there were risks such as hallucinations or deepfakes which were being addressed by the establishment of an assessment methodology and industry collaboration.
«We have been on the fintech journey for about 10 years, and I am heartened at how our fintech sector has been shaping up,» Chia added. «We started with fewer than 50 fintech firms in 2015, and today we have more than 1,400 fintech firms based in Singapore. More than 40 innovation labs from financial institutions and technology players serving the financial sector are based in Singapore.»
