AMTD News | Keep Building, Keep Connecting and Keep Growing: AMTD Digital to Continue Investing into Digital Innovations in Singapore and ASEAN

The Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS) awarded four digital banking licenses last week. We congratulate the four recipients of the digital bank licenses. While we were expecting to leverage our powerful platform bank model to help SMEs to digitalize and improve their access to funding, we remain steadfast in our commitment to build a one-stop, comprehensive, cross-market, and innovative digital solutions platform, creating our SingaWorld. We are committed to investing into Singapore as our digital platform’s global headquarters, expand to the rest of ASEAN and lead the digital innovations in the region.

We congratulate the MAS and all the participants on the grand opening of Singapore FinTech Festival (SFF) today. AMTD is extremely honored to be a founding partner the SFF, the largest FinTech event, as the Grand Sponsor for the 4th consecutive year. We would like to take the opportunity to announce the following commitments to support local FinTech community:

1) We undertake our willingness and support to the SFF as a Grand Sponsor in the next three years at a minimum;

2) We shall further increase our AMTD ASEAN SOLIDARITY FUND from an initial capital of S$50 million to S$80 million; the application deadline shall also be extended from 31 Dec 2020 to 31 Dec 2021. The solidarity fund was jointly established by AMTD and the ASEAN Financial Innovation Network (“AFIN”) to support and anchor eligible FinTech companies registered on the API Exchange Platform in ASEAN countries during this challenging time of the pandemic;

3) Our AMTD Digital’s Global Headquarters and AMTD Group’s Regional Headquarters are in the process of setting up in Singapore. The official opening is expected to take place in the next 8 to 12 weeks. It will host all Singapore-based talents and subsidiaries. By now, AMTD Digital has the following core team of local talents on boarded:

• Osman Faiz - Chief Information and Operating Officer
• P.K. Raman - Chief Risk Officer
• Alex Titlyanov - Chief Technology Officer
• Gary Soh - Head of Compliance and Controls
• Yogesh K. Madaan - Head of Cybersecurity, Data & Privacy
• Paula Liu - Head of Digital, Innovations & Client Experience
• Vincent Ling - Head of Transactional Banking & Payment Solutions
• Pierre Habib - Head of Growth & Ecosystem

4) We are committed to take the lead in organising @-WISE Cybersecurity Summit and Singa Green Tech Summit each year in Singapore alongside the SFF as satellite events going forward.

Calvin Choi, Chairman of AMTD Group reiterated AMTD Digital’s ambition to become a leading FinTech platform in the ASEAN region out from the global headquarters in Singapore. He added “It has been an amazing journey working with a fantastic group of consortium partners and ecosystem members. Our mission to build SingaWorld is crystal clear: to work closely with the Singapore community to create and deliver partnership and ecosystem solutions to enable SMEs, empower entrepreneurs to grow and succeed in this region.”

Annie Koh, Independent Non-executive Director of AMTD Digital, Vice President of Singapore Management University together with Neil Parekh, Independent Non-executive Director of AMTD Digital, former General Manager of Asia for National Australia Bank, commented, “It has been an honour serving on the boards of AMTD Digital. AMTD Digital consists of a group of professionals within the consortium of partners having one clear purpose - committed to build a better world with one stop digital solutions. Digital enables speed and scale - but trust is built by talented people to enable everyone to run longer together and build sustainability. We are very sure that AMTD Digital will be a trusted brand in years to come”.

Val Yap, founder and CEO of PolicyPal, and the InsurTech subject matter champion of AMTD Digital added “As a young local startup, we have our aspirations to grow and learn. It has been an incredible experience working with AMTD and the consortium for the past 1.5 years developing SingaWorld together. Our partner, AMTD has been instrumental in building a thriving FinTech ecosystem and community in Singapore. During this pandemic year, the team at AMTD facilitate and accelerate all other types of business and expansion opportunities across region including our upcoming launch in Hong Kong. Being part of the ecosystem brings us together with aligned interest with other fintech startups, enhancing the cross-startup partnerships, coordinated implementation and testing and a smooth route-to-market. I was also honoured to join the launch of AXSI Digital Finance Leadership Programme last evening where AMTD and Xiaomi finance support to nurture local pool of talents driving innovation in the fintech industry.”

With the commitments and key objectives above, AMTD has been committed to cultivating FinTech talents in the region; grooming and developing digital leaders of tomorrow for Singapore. We have formed a powerful SpiderNet ecosystem to facilitate the connectivity between ecosystem partners, cross-border collaborations, and capital market activities between Singapore, ASEAN and Greater Bay Area, and most importantly to connect people talents.

We have been investing into Singapore in the past few years, 2020 due to the pandemic and global uncertainties in particular was a challenging but a very productive year. Our key efforts include: launching the AXSI Digital Finance Leadership Programme (“AXSI Programme”) together with Xiaomi Finance, Singapore Management University (SMU) and the Institute of Systems Science at the National University of Singapore (NUS-ISS). Together with University of Waterloo, iQ4 and the Singapore FinTech Association (SFA), we have established @-WISE Cybersecurity Centre of Excellence in Singapore as its permanent base. Together with SP Group, Xiaomi Finance, and Funding Societies, we led a consortium of 13 partners to establish Singa Green Tech Centre.

We also formed a consortium together with Xiaomi, Funding Societies and the SP group as its founding members to submit our application to the digital bank license. The consortium’s vision is focused entirely to address the full range of SME financial and non-financial needs, support the SMEs along their digitalization journeys and to energize capital markets innovation in Singapore. The consortium members are confident the value proposition of SingaWorld remains relevant today and will strive to value add to the community around us, and make Singapore a better nation.