tharman shanmugaratnam : promoting innovation in finance in singapore speech by mr tharman shanmugaratnam, chairman of the monetary authority of singapore, at the launch of the singapore fintech festival, at the asia society, new york city, 12 april 2016. * * * i ’ d like to thank the asia society for hosting us this evening, for the launch of the singapore fintech festival. the festival will take place over 5 days in november this year in singapore, bringing together technology players, financial institutions, fintech players and regulators. we are launching the festival in new york city, and that is not as surprising as it may first seem. it says something about how we view innovation in finance. it is an inherently open system. innovation is about ideas and enterprise flowing between cities, and connections between players everywhere. we can ’ t predict how those connections will unfold, but we know that there ’ s no neat geography that will define financial innovation. it ’ s also why we shouldn ’ t focus too much on the rankings of different financial centres at this stage of the game. you know what they say about the rankings of colleges and universities. if you rank very well, the rank is extremely important. and if you are not ranked well, they are unimportant, irrelevant, and they don ’ t get to the heart of what you are really trying to do. well, we are nicely on both sides of that. singapore does rank well in the fintech stakes, but i have to tell you that it ’ s a distraction at this stage and it really doesn ’ t get to the heart of what we are doing. our aim is not to see if we can be above other financial centres, but to push the envelope and transform finance : to encourage players to find new ways of doing the business, and in a way that makes more sense to the customer – the borrower, the lender, the middle - class investor, or someone who makes payments or receives them. transforming finance to be more tailored to their needs, something that ’ s if possible cheaper, or more convenient and accessible to the customer. that ’ s our aim. but we are at an early stage in fintech. we are at the cusp of the new wave of innovation. there ’ s no assurance that it will succeed, and no telling who will succeed. but it shows much promise – promise of delivering better value to the customer. there ’ s a second

reason why the rankings are really not the end game, and that ’ s because fintech probably more so than conventional finance is going to involve tie - ups and collaborations – between players and between cities, at the same time that it ’ s an extremely competitive business. the asia - pacific has tremendous untapped potential in finance. there is a very significant underserved market in the asia pacific, in southeast asia, in china, in india. a very large base of the pyramid, so to speak, that ’ s not well served by the financial sector in asia. so there ’ s tremendous scope for innovation in finance as a way of reaching out to far more people and meeting their needs. and there ’ s a new generation of tech - savvy individuals in asia like elsewhere. they are also averse to paying fees. they too are a prime market for fintech in asia. we are promoting innovation in finance in a comprehensive way in singapore. it requires a whole ecosystem. it requires bringing a whole range of players together – the technology players, finance players, start - ups, and both global and local singapore players. we are also looking at every segment of the financial business. there is scope for innovation across the business – in credit, savings, investing, payments and so on. bis central bankers ’ speeches but importantly too, we intend to be right there at the frontier with regard to the common technology platforms, or the utilities that can be a very important enabler for innovation in finance – the common platforms that help individual players, produce network effects as more players come on board, and help the market work better. we are looking at each of the industry verticals to see what common platforms might be needed. ravi will talk more about this. in trade finance, for example, where we are making good progress. there are also the horizontal infrastructures that can underpin innovation in a range of industry verticals. such as the infrastructure for centralised addressing for real time mobile payments. and the efficient and secure storage of data in the cloud. and critically – no one has done this very well in in an organized way, having open apis, whether private or public apis in each of our established players. open apis can spur innovation in banking and finance. there will be tensions as we go forward with fintech, tensions inherent in a new wave of innovation, that we must accept and manage. first, the tension between new players and established players, or the