Singapore kicks off week-long FinTech Festival

SINGAPORE — The inaugural Singapore FinTech Festival kicked off yesterday, with DBS Bank officially opening its new 16,000sqf innovation facility, IBM announcing projects with two home-grown fintech start-ups, and German insurance major Allianz announcing the launch of its Digital Arena innovation platform.

The week-long event is organised by the Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS) along with The Association of Banks in Singapore. Close to 11,000 participants from more than 50 countries have pledged their participation in a series of events, which include conferences on fintech, technology risk and regulations.

The festival began yesterday with an island-wide Innovation Lab Crawl, where more than 20 innovation labs — including from Google, AXA, Aviva, ANZ, Singtel, PayPal, Microsoft and KPMG, among others — demonstrated their solutions and offered visitors a glimpse into the future of finance.

IBM yesterday announced a Blockchain project with Singapore fintech start-up Kyck! to help enable financial services providers to more rapidly onboard their customers at a reduced cost and in a secure environment.

With banks and financial institutions required to comply with regulations around Know Your Customer (KYC), Blockchain has the potential to help address this need to prove the identity of a person or organisation, source of funds, business interests, history and also monitor changes, said IBM yesterday.

“The application of Blockchain is showing great promise across a broad range of business applications. It is a technology that establishes accountability and transparency while streamlining business processes,” said Mr Alan Lim, practice lead, IBM Blockchain & Bluemix Garage, Asean.

Yesterday, DBS also officially launched DBS Asia X (DAX) — a 16,000sqf innovation space with project pods and spaces, journey rooms, co-working spaces for up to 100 people as well as an auditorium and cafe, at Sandcrawler Building in Fusionopolis.

Mr Piyush Gupta, CEO of DBS Bank said : “DBS Asia X underscores DBS’ ongoing commitment to shaping the future of banking and embracing the future of work. It is a purpose-built facility for DBS employees from all over the region to come together, design and develop iconic customer journeys and work in close collaboration with start-ups and the broader fintech community. We look towards helping to further Singapore’s Smart Nation agenda as we transform DBS into a 22,000 person start-up.”

On the insurance front, Allianz yesterday launched its Digital Arena innovation platform, a programme the company says it hopes will encourage start-ups and entrepreneurs to share and pitch fresh ideas.

The platform aims to pioneer next-generation innovation and solutions in connected health, mobility, insurtech, analytics and cyber security.