Part 1: Ushering the new era of open marketplace and data

The Fintech journey of Singapore is nothing short of extraordinary. Despite its limited means, the city-state has become one of the world’s leading Fintech hub by bringing together regulators, startups, investors and corporates to achieve a common goal. Being Kiasu (a Hokkien word which can be loosely translated to fear of missing out) and other unique characteristics of the Singaporean culture played a big part in this success as well as the regulators’ forward-thinking policies.

In partnership with Fintech Academy, we invite you to join one of the authors behind the book “Singapore: The Fintech Nation”, Dr Lillian Koh, who will share with us on the country’s Fintech journey of the ecosystem and the key principles which established Singapore as a Fintech Nation.

Navin joins Dr. Koh to share a rare behind-the-scenes story of how Singapore set up API-Exchange - APIX, the world’s first cross-border collaboration platform for the global financial services industry. In less than 2 years, APIX list of member of FIs and FinTechs has rapidly crossed 450, coming from over 30 countries. FIs on APIX have collectively received over 1,000 proposals from FinTechs for problem statements regularly posted by them on APIX. APIX has also helped FinTechs raise funding through programs co-designed with Venture Capitalists through a challenging 2020.

APIX FI members span across the size and scale spectrum, from the biggest global FIs e.g. Prudential Insurance, Bank of New York Mellon, HSBC, Bank of International Settlements, multi-lateral agency UNDP, the Financial Alliance for Women, and the just announced partnership with NPCI (National Payments Corp. Of India), to a growing number of younger / smaller FIs like Cantilan Bank in the Philippines.

Navin will also share an exciting curtain-raiser on the new capabilities APIX will launch soon for both FinTechs and FIs.

Irina will be moderating the whole session bridging both speakers and the audience, and will also share her own personal insights and experiences on her journey in the making of the Fintech Nation.

About the Speakers

Dr Lillian Koh, Founder, Fintech Academy and Co-Author, "Singapore: The Fintech Nation"

Dr Lillian Koh, Ph.D. is the Research Director at Curtin University, Singapore and is the Founder of the Fintech Academy. She has organized several Fintech Conferences in Singapore including the inaugural International Fintech Conference in Vietnam in 2019. After serving 17 years at the Ministry of Education Singapore and another 17 years at the Nanyang Technological University, she founded Fintech Academy. She also spearheads the Healthcare Fintech Alliance (HFA) together with Pfizer and Alibaba Cloud. She is Advisor to the Institute of Blockchain Singapore.

Navin Suri, CEO, Percipient

Navin’s mission at Percipient is to enable mid-to-small tier banks go digital without technology transformation.

Headquartered in Singapore and with teams in USA and India, Percipient launched the world’s 1st Digital Twinn for banks, a ground-breaking plug-in that rapidly creates a digital representation of a bank’s data from across a myriad of legacy and siloed systems. The Twinn then enables banks to launch digital products, partnerships and experiences, with whatever-tech-they-run on, and in under a tenth in cost and time.

Earlier, Navin was named to EY’s prestigious Global Top 30 Accelerating Entrepreneurs list. He has been a core think-tank member of the team that co-designed and later co-developed API Exchange APIX, the world’s first open-collaboration platform for the global financial services industry, founded by the Monetary Authority of Singapore & IFC. The platform now has over 400 members including banks, insurers and start-ups from over 30 countries.

Through his corporate career, Navin has held senior roles with APAC remits at Citi, ING & Bank of New York Mellon. He serves on the Board of Directors at Nomura Asset Management in Taiwan. Navin was appointed to two Expert Panels at the Wealth Management Institute of world 11th ranked university, NTU Singapore.

Navin is the Curator of OXYGEN by APIX, a 5-day conference held under the aegis of the Singapore FinTech Festival. OXYGEN is dedicated to the rapidly growing area of platforms and ecosystems.

Irina Chuchkina, Marketing Director, APAC, Rapyd

Irina heads up APAC Marketing for Rapyd, a Global Fintech-as-a-Service unicorn backed by Stripe and General Catalyst.

Passionate about Fintech, she spent 15 years working on the intersection of Marketing, Payments, and Technology across CEMEA and APAC regions. Prior to joining Rapyd, she led Regional Partner Marketing for Grab, where she helped to launch GrabPay, Grab’s proprietary mobile wallet, GrabRewards, its loyalty platform, as well as led partnerships with Mastercard, Citibank, Standard Chartered Bank, PayPal, and Visa. She also spent several years at Visa, where she helped grow Visa's Innovation Lab presence in APAC, ran Client and Merchant Marketing in Russia, was part of the Olympic Games and World Cup mega-campaigns, and launched solutions that changed the way people pay.

Irina holds an MBA degree from INSEAD and currently lives in Singapore with her husband and three kids.

About The Book - SINGAPORE: THE FINTECH NATION

Fintech journey of Singapore has been a story of relentless pursuit of excellence to build a global financial service hub with limited means and lots of aspirations. The slogan of “Dream big. Start small. Move fast” brought together regulators, startups, investors, corporates and everyone else to achieve a common goal.

One of the critical superpowers of Singapore is a national character built on survival instinct and a distinctive obsession with being successful. Singaporeans by nature are Kiasu (a Hokkien word which can be loosely translated to fear of missing out), and they wear it as a badge of honor. Like Israeli Chutzpah, it has both positive and negative connotations. Being Kiasu (drives Singaporeans to be constantly paranoid, doing everything they can to achieve success. It creates a certain fanaticism about meritocracy and instils a belief that one can never be complacent. In a regulated industry, our fear is our biggest strength, pushing us to comply with a wide range of ever-evolving regulations. The durable social fabric supports an adherence to order and authority. It proves to be a significant asset when it comes to developing and supporting a heavily regulated industry like financial services.

Singapore attracts people across the region to build their ventures in the domains of finance and technology. This book traces Singapore's journey from 2015 till today starting with establishment of regional hubs and globalization of fintech innovation. The key principles which established Singapore as a Fintech Nation have been an obsession with excellence referred to as RFFL (Right First, Fast Later), a unique model of economic and legal policies known as Singanomics and lastly, an organized and controlled model of a new idea development termed Garden Innovation.

This book was developed through 57 one-on-one interviews with founders and enablers, bringing together the stories and journeys of founders and enablers of the fintech ecosystem including access to capital, customers, talent, and policy initiatives which have made them and Singapore successful. These narratives are set against the context of key regulatory policy decisions and background of how some of the foundation blocks of Fintech Nation were set up and evolved over time. It aims to inspire the next generation to build their ventures and bring technology to the masses, improving the lives of billions. It contains a special chapter from Chief Fintech Officer, Monetary Authority of Singapore, Sopnendu Mohanty covering the subject from the lenses of a regulator.