Wee Ee Cheong, group CEO, United Overseas Bank (UOB) opened the Singapore FinTech Festical (SFF) 2025 with a keynote speech that focused on FinTech but, in a year when UOB celebrated its 90th anniversary, stressed the importance of trust, culture and values. The importance of trust in banking, often a theme Wee returns to during UOB’s results briefing, was emphasised in his speech, and echoed during DBS Group Holdings’ group CEO Tan Su Shan in a fireside chat with Deputy Prime Minister and chairman of the Monetary of Singapore. “Trust remains the bedrock of finance,” Wee says.
“Singapore has always been a trusted partner for with our trading partners, our economic partners, even during Covid-19. We kept our ports open, we delivered on our goods, we honoured our commitments to the rest of the world. Trust is going to fetch a premium in today's world, where there's a lot of uncertainty, a lot of changes, a lot of volatility, what people are looking for is stability, trust and reliability,” DPM Gan says.
When describing mankind’s relationship with machines, UOB’s Wee turned to the bank being a trusted partner over time: “While technology is reshaping finance, I believe the human touch is irreplaceable. AI cannot replace empathy in advice, ethics in decisions, leadership and judgment. Ultimately, trust is built over time. We often hear about machines taking over people's job, but if we believe that we are here to serve humanity, then our mindset should be to work alongside machines and use technology to uplift everyone,” Wee says.
Over the past decade, the SFF has become a global stage for both ideas, partnerships and innovation shaping the future of finance. “FinTech has expanded financial accessibility and inclusiveness for individuals and businesses, payments for the underbanked, affordable cross-border remittances, access to customised financing solutions, financial investments for wealth inclusion,” Wee acknowledges.
At the same time, cybersecurity threats demand stronger collective defense. Likewise, AML, KYC, AI and blockchain show promise but but scaling requires clarity and harmonisation on regulations, standards and compatibility. AI and cloud growth’s environmental impact and energy-specific needs pose practical constraints and need long-term considerations, Wee cautions.
During the fireside chat, DPM Gan stressed the importance of working together with like-minded partners to uphold the rules-based global trading system. “We want to continue to be able to push ahead with the multilateral, rules-based trading system, despite the challenges that we see in the world. We are also working together with our partners to think about how we can transform WTO because the current design architecture of WTO may no longer be workable. These are the issues that we are discussing among partners within Asean as well as with our partners.
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“Asean is also working with different economic blocks, economic groups such as the GCC, CPTPP (Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership) as well as EU, to see how we can build bridges among these groups of economies,” DPM Gan continues.
“AI has its own risks. In Singapore, there's a lot of focus on developing guardrails, developing guidance in the development and deployment of AI technology safely and ethically. We need to work with like-minded countries coming together to develop a set of guidelines and rules that all of us will observe,” DPM Gan says.
See also: Singapore’s reliability becomes premium asset in volatile world, says DPM Gan
DBS’s Tan points to the advantage of the regulatory sandbox that helps with developing rules. “MAS was one of the first regulators to announce regulations around stable coins, and a lot of different sandboxes, such as Project Guardian and Project Bloom.”
She is also concerned that AI has been misused. “I'm not on Tiktok but every time I open Tiktok, there's a deepfake of me selling Bitcoin. It's not me,” Tan jokes.
Rules and guidelines for digital assets
DPM Gan is cognisant of the risks involved as Singapore develops its digital tokens sector. “To be quite clear, there are risks involved. It's important MAS took the lead to develop rules and guidelines of how these digital assets have to be regulated, so that we ensure that they are put to good use and to also protect individuals, particularly the retail users of these digital tokens, to be quite aware of the risk that they are taking and to protect them against unexpected disasters.”
Gan adds that Singapore would wish to take a “leadership position” in developing rules and guidelines around digital assets. “At the same time, we also want to develop connectivity among our partners on the digital assets so that they are interoperable and exchangeable. We are working with our financial institutions and our partners to develop this capability,” he says.
SFF 2025’s theme for its 10th anniversary is artificial intelligence (AI), quantum computing and tokenisation.
Both AI and quantum computing may well yield huge advances in productivity in the decade ahead, but all three themes could also introduce new threats, especially if bad actors use them for advantage.
“Trust and transparency will be the new competitive edge. Innovation will define the decade ahead, but trust will build relationships that last,” Wee says.
