The third edition of the Singapore Fintech Festival wrapped up its week-long event last Friday, which drew close to 45,000 participants from almost 130 countries.
The Festival is the biggest fintech event in the world and provides a global platform for the fintech community to connect, collaborate and co-create.
The Festival also featured more than 250 speakers, almost 500 exhibitors – 60 percent of which were foreign, and 16 international pavilions, according to a news release from the Monethary Authority of Singapore, MAS, on Monday. Here are the festival highlights.
1. International and Local Dignitaries
The three-day fintech conference (12-14 November) was graced by international and local dignitaries, including Narendra Modi, Prime Minister of India, Christine Lagarde, Managing Director, International Monetary Fund, and Ong Ye Kung, Minister for Education of Singapore and Board Member of the Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS). Justin Trudeau, Prime Minister of Canada, Heng Swee Keat, Minister for Finance of Singapore, Patrick Njoroge, Governor of Central Bank of Kenya, and Sonexay Sithphaxay, Governor of Bank of the Lao PDR, were among other leaders who visited the Festival.
2. Important Agreements
PM Modi, and Tharman Shanmugaratnam, Deputy Prime Minister of Singapore and Chairman of MAS, jointly launched the API Exchange (APIX), an online global fintech marketplace and sandbox platform for financial institutions. In addition, seven agreements were inked between MAS and international financial authorities on the sidelines of the Festival.
3. International Pavilions
The 16 international pavilions represent Abu Dhabi, Canada, Hong Kong, India, Ireland, Israel, Japan, Kazakhstan, Korea, Latin America, New Zealand, Philippines, Poland, Switzerland, United Kingdom and United States.
4. Deal-Making Platform
Several deals were announced at the deal-making platform, MATCH (Meet ASEAN’s Talents and Champions), which was presented for the first time at the festival and the Global Investor Summit.
One of the MATCH participants, GTR Ventures, an investment and venture-building platform specialising in trade and supply chain, announced three new deals with Lucidity, iLoan and RM-Tech.
Another MATCH participant, Vanda Global Capital, a venture capital fund management company with a Singapore and global focus, also announced that it had signed a collaboration agreement with Shenzhen Dayshine Fund Management and Raffles Capital to launch a ground-breaking, $1.5 billion Asia agriculture technology fund, named the Asia AgriTech Fund.
5. Artificial Intelligence as New Element
The Artificial Intelligence (AI) in Finance Summit, a new element of the conference, was well-attended and saw insightful sharing of views by influential technology speakers such as Cassie Kozyrkov from Google, Jaan Tallinn from Metaplanet, Peter Schwartz from Salesforce, Chieko Asakawa from IBM, and Joanna Bryson from University of Bath.
At the Festival, MAS also released a set of principles to promote Fairness, Ethics, Accountability and Transparency (FEAT) in the use of AI and data analytics in finance.
6. Many Events Around Singapore
The Innovation Lab Crawl and Industry Events (15-16 November) wrapped up with close to 10,000 visitors across 32 innovation labs, 60 workshops and networking events held around Singapore.
7. Strong Interest to Return
The Singapore FinTech Festival will return next year from 11 to 15 November 2019 along with Prudential, who has committed to be a Grand Sponsor of the Festival till 2022. Many other sponsors and exhibitors have also expressed strong interest to return in the 2019 Festival.
