Ravi Menon: Powering the next stage of Singapore FinTech Speech by Mr Ravi Menon, Managing Director of the Monetary Authority of Singapore, at the Singapore FinTech Festival “The Green Shoots Series – Leading Through a Crisis: Up Close and Personal with Mr Ravi Menon”, Singapore, 13 August 2020. * * *  Five years ago, we had a vision – to make Singapore a Smart Financial Centre. A financial centre where innovation is pervasive and technology is used widely – to increase efficiency; to create new opportunities; to manage risks better; and most importantly to improve people’s lives. A new buzzword was emerging on the scene – “FinTech”. We set our goal to become a leading global FinTech hub. At the core of our drive was a conviction that technology will fundamentally transform financial services … … that if our financial sector stood still, we would be swept away by the tides of technological changes. And the tides were coming in fast: digital and mobile payments; block chains; cloud computing; big data and analytics; AI and learning machines. Together with the industry, MAS set about creating a FinTech ecosystem that embraced both incumbents and insurgents. We wanted to facilitate the digital transformation of established financial institutions so that they can innovate and compete with the best. We also wanted to support FinTech firms outside the financial sector who were innovating new ways to provide financial services.
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