Singapore Fintech Festival Recap
Last week was the Singapore Fintech Festival (SFF), the third instance of this annual event that began in 2016. This year it had 40,000 attendees, almost double of 2017. The event also took over four large halls with some amazing booths and showcases. The Bluzelle team was there to experience the whole multi-day event and I was fortunate to get on stage to discuss key aspects of blockchain. The rest of this piece will go over some the key items I took away.
More Tech Than Fin
The big change this year was the dominance of pure tech companies. The big banks and management firms had their booths out and were showcasing products and Proofs of Concepts (POCs) they did over the past year, but the standouts were Google Cloud, AWS and Salesforce. None of those companies would you equate with finance, but they were front and center attracting the largest audiences to their booths. This showed a clear trend in terms of where the innovations are coming for finance.
Payments Were Not Dominating
In most fintech related events, the dominant topic is payments, this includes Money 20/20. But at SFF the four dominating themes were: AI, Machine Learning, Data, Blockchain. Google Cloud and AWS presented multiple ways they can help banks and insurers with their AI and Machine Learning solutions in the areas of identity management, customer services. There were many companies focusing on data analytics and the large banks themselves spoke about delivering data-driven decisions which help the end customer.
Insurance Should Lead in Blockchain Applications
For blockchain the uses cases were in the expected KYC, back-end processing, fund management. I moderated a panel on Smart Contracts for insurance with leaders from AXA, Met Life and Accenture. It was good to hear that all three are still very aggressive on delivering products and finding new ways for emerging markets to obtain insurance. Met Life is using smart contracts to help pregnant women get tested for gestational diabetes. Probably one of the most creative but also applicable use cases out there. AXA has a product out for travel insurance and is working on helping farmers with agriculture insurance. Both are happening because of smart contracts.
With insurance we also spoke about the need for storing records, such as health, on decentralized services. With smart contracts relying on real-time data to execute decisions, insurers need to make sure the data isn’t corrupted hence the need for database protocols like Bluzelle.
Global Leaders Showing Confidence in Blockchain
On the final day, SFF had three global leaders come through, Indian Prime Minister Modi, Canadian Prime Minister Trudeau, and Chairwoman of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) Christine Lagarde. PM Modi spoke about the digital transformation India is currently going under and the amount of unbanked people becoming banked now. Ms Largarde gave a big push for cryptocurrencies acknowledging its benefits and how central banks can accelerate mass awareness and adoption by issuing their own digital currency.
I was lucky enough to meet with PM Justin Trudeau (me being a Canadian and in this space helped). We spoke about the PM Trudeau spoke about the four technologies addressed above and told me how much Canada is doing at the university and high school level to educate not only students but also inform their parents on the opportunities that lie ahead. He sees this as an amazing time for those companies and governments that embrace AI, Data, Machine Learning, and Blockchain.
Given our meetings and talks with financial services companies, my prediction for next year is that decentralized services will be added as a major theme; especially as everyone is recognizing data now becoming a currency.
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