tharman shanmugaratnam : enterprise innovation - improving lives in singapore and technological speech by mr tharman shanmugaratnam, chairman of the monetary authority of singapore, at the fintech awards, singapore, 17 november 2016. * * * mr wee ee cheong, chairman, abs and ceo, uob distinguished guests, ladies and gentlemen, 1 thank you for joining us here at our inaugural fintech awards prize presentation ceremony. 2 let me begin by thanking the participating teams, as well as the international cast of judges who helped evaluate the entries, for their time and inspiring work. 3 this evening, we are honouring winners from two competitions organised as part of the inaugural singapore fintech festival : the global fintech hackcelerator and the fintech awards. the global fintech hackcelerator attracted a total of 655 submissions from more than 50 countries. they produced solutions to address some of the 100 problem statements that the financial sector had put out. the fintech awards recognises innovative fintech solutions that have actually been implemented by financial sector players and technology companies. we received 210 entries, running the gamut from cyber security to payments. 4 we celebrate the winning entries this evening. but equally, we are celebrating the spirit of innovation that each of the participants in these competitions demonstrated. they represent the passion to make things better, to create value for firms in a way that gives customers value, and ultimately, to find innovative ways to improve everyday life. that is the fintech spirit. 5 these last four days of the fintech festival, there has been much discussion about technology, regulation, infrastructure, markets, funding. 6 tonight, i would like to speak briefly on the critical people factor – not just for success in fintech but more broadly in the innovation - driven economy of tomorrow : people having that spirit of enterprise and a willingness to be different ; and people developing deep skills, skills relevant to the market, and a keenness to learn continuously. 7 that ’ s at the heart of what it takes for us to sustain and grow the fintech movement – the entrepreneurial desire to find new ways, even disruptive ways, and the deep skills and continuous learning that we need to power innovation. enterprise and innovation 8 we are already seeing successes, and we want to provide a fertile ground for more new ideas and solutions to keep cropping up. mas has a regulatory sandbox framework to make it easier for fintech start - ups to test their business

at all possible to unwind globalization without seriously affecting national economies and the global economy, the objective being some trade - off between a little gdp for greater income equality. the “ big ideas ” might be out there, but they ’ re buried in a blizzard of abstractions, qualifiers, pros - and - cons, excuses and rationalizations, the truly annoying and pathetic deflections, even counter and counter - counter arguments. the clash between economics and politics is assuming a dimension that does not augur well for the world economy. the ratios of world trade to world output have been flat since 2008, making it the longest period of stagnation since world war ii. does it suggest that globalization is no longer driving world growth? has globalization reached its limit? if the process is coming to an end, or even going in reverse, it would not be the first time since the industrial revolution, in the early 19th century. two phenomena might threaten democracy : continuing weak productivity and what has come to be known as secular stagnation, a terminology coined by larry summers. we commonly 2 / 7 bis central bankers'speeches understand democracy as a system that takes scores of voters to say ‘ yes ’ before reforms are implemented. democracies also have loud voices. those are voices that wait for a fight to break out and take a swing at the guy they have always wanted to hit. whether or not the guy had anything to do with starting the fight is beside the point. it takes only a few loud voices that cherish democracy to say ‘ no ’ to stop the reforms. press the ‘ no ’ button for reforms, the path to economic recovery becomes unnavigable. no wonder it takes long for democracies to come out of recession. a blistering cocktail of unsettling forces is militating in most societies. the vast majority of people finds the word ‘ austerity ’ abhorrent. we are not exempt. voices, particularly the louder ones, suffused with vice and folly with some form of addictive delirium, are more about ‘ taking ’ than about ‘ making ’. it leaves one rather uninspired when it comes to the ‘ mental tone ’ underlying people ’ s actions. unlike in the distant past, more precisely in what used to be called a peasant society, a man is no longer sized up by the number of children he has. he is today sized up by the number of rolex watches and number of t