Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS) Chairman Gan Kim Yong (25/6/26): 1) Financial Sector Contributes 14% of Singapore GDP & Employs 200,000 People, 2) Singapore Wealth & Asset Management Industry with $5.2 Trillion (S$6.7 Trillion) AUM in 2025, 3) Singapore is World 3rd Largest Foreign Exchange Hub & Asia 2nd Largest Reinsurance Hub, 4) New Growth Capital Workgroup Setup in 2026, 5) New Gold Clearing System to be Setup by 2026, 6) Singapore MAS Will Provide Vaulting Facilities for Foreign Central Banks & Sovereigns, 7) New Corporate Structure (Protected Cell Company, PCC) to Allow Assets & Liabilities to be Ring-Fenced Within Individual Cells under Single Core Entity to Scale Alternate Risk-Transfer Solutions, 8) Future of Finance Institute (FFI) to Accelerate Adoption of New Financial Technologies & Catalyse Innovation in Financial Sectors, 9) ABS, IBF and NTUC Financial and Professional Services Cluster (of Unions) to Help ABS Members Equip Workforce with Critical AI Skills, 10) New Category for Non-Traditional Funds to Help Fund Managers Launch Funds, 11) New Funds Authorization in 3 Weeks

Chairman and Council Members of the ABS,
Distinguished guests,
Ladies and gentlemen,

Introduction

1. Good evening to all of you. Let me first thank you for inviting me to join you at this year’s ABS Annual Dinner.

2. The financial sector is a key pillar of Singapore’s economy.

a. It contributes about 14% of our GDP, and employs around 200,000 people, more than 80% of whom are locals. Last year alone, the sector added 3,000 net jobs.

b. The sector has remained resilient throughout multiple crises and global shocks over the past few years.

i. Total assets in our banking sector grew at about 6% annually from 2021 to 2025, and have continued to expand into the first quarter of this year.

ii. Singapore managed S$6.7 trillion in assets as of end-2025, reflecting a strong 11% compound annual growth rate over the past three years. The majority of the assets were sourced internationally and invested across global and regional markets.

iii. Singapore is Asia’s largest foreign exchange hub and the world’s third largest.

iv. We are also Asia’s second-largest reinsurance hub and a growing base for alternative risk transfer.

3. These figures reflect the trust that institutions and investors place in Singapore to remain stable, open, well-regulated and well-connected.

4. But trust has to be continuously renewed and strengthened.

a. A more fragmented world needs trusted connectors.

b. A more uncertain world needs deeper risk capacity.

c. A more digital world needs responsible innovation.

d. And an ageing society needs financial services that remain accessible, trusted and human.

5. Singapore needs to renew our strategy and relevance in a fast-changing world. This is the thread running through the initiatives I will speak about this evening.

a. First, connecting capital to growth and resilience.

b. Second, connecting innovation to trust and adoption.

c. And third, connecting finance to people and the real economy.

Connecting capital to growth and building resilience to risk

6. The first priority is to strengthen how Singapore connects capital to growth and builds resilience to risk.

7. Asia’s long-term growth potential remains significant, and Singapore can play a larger role in mobilising and intermediating growth capital.

a. As companies seek to grow, they need a wider range of funding options beyond bank lending.

b. These include venture capital, private credit, growth equity, securitisation, secondary market liquidity, and eventually access to public markets.

c. Earlier this year, MAS and MTI set up the Growth Capital Workgroup to strengthen Singapore’s growth capital ecosystem.

8. We are also strengthening Singapore’s role in gold trading, clearing and storage.

a. Growth capital and gold may appear to be very different markets. But they point to the same priority: Singapore will build trusted infrastructure to support flows that are important to Asia.

b. As we had earlier announced, SGX will establish and operate a new gold clearing system by the end of this year, with six banks as the initial clearing banks.

c. MAS will also begin providing vaulting facilities for foreign central banks and sovereigns.

9. Growth must also be matched by resilience.

a. Risks today are more complex, more connected, and harder to price.

b. A single disruption can cascade across multiple sectors and geographies.

10. Asia remains significantly underinsured. Traditional insurance and reinsurance capacity will continue to be crucial, but traditional underwriting alone will not be enough.

11. The financial centres that can bring together underwriting expertise, reinsurance capacity, alternative capital and flexible risk-transfer structures will be best positioned for growth.

12. MAS will soon consult on introducing a new corporate structure – the Protected Cell Company, or PCC – to scale alternative risk-transfer solutions.

a. A PCC allows assets and liabilities to be ring-fenced within individual cells under a single core entity. This makes it possible to structure different risks separately, while using shared infrastructure.

b. The result is greater flexibility, lower cost and more efficient risk transfer. PCCs can make captive insurance solutions more accessible for corporates, and make it faster and cheaper for sponsors of insurance-linked securities to transfer risks to capital markets.

c. By enabling more alternative risk transfer solutions, the PCC framework will complement the traditional reinsurance market, expand risk capacity, and deepen Singapore’s role as a hub for insurance and risk solution innovation.

d. MAS will share more details of the public consultation in the coming weeks.

13. Taken together, growth capital, gold trading and PCCs are part of the same agenda. We are building trusted market infrastructure for Asia’s next phase of growth and development.

Connecting innovation to trust and adoption

14. The second priority is innovation, especially innovation anchored in trust.

15. When innovation is deployed badly, customers can be harmed, risks can spread quickly, and confidence can be shaken.

16. We must make innovation easier to adopt, but harder to misuse.

17. AI, for example, has the potential to transform financial services, but only if it is deployed safely and responsibly.

a. We want Singapore to be a global launchpad for AI in financial services: to anchor strong AI capabilities within financial institutions here, and to broaden adoption across the sector.

b. We have made meaningful progress.

i. More than 30 financial institutions have established AI competency centres in Singapore.

ii. Pathfin.ai, the industry’s shared platform for validated AI use cases and solutions, now has more than 200 participating financial institutions.

c. But the next challenge is whether the sector can move from experimentation to deployment.

18. To scale AI responsibly, the industry needs shared infrastructure, shared learning, practical toolkits, and safe testing environments. This is why MAS is establishing the Future of Finance Institute, or FFI.

19. The FFI will be Singapore’s national innovation centre for the financial sector. It will build four capabilities:

a. First, a knowledge hub to connect institutions around validated use cases;

b. Second, an innovation garage to pool resources for targeted AI and tokenisation capabilities;

c. Third, industry sandboxes to test emerging technologies in a controlled environment; and

d. Fourth, implementation toolkits to translate policy, research and pilots into practical tools.

20. The FFI will help the industry move from pilots to practical deployment – not just for the largest institutions, but across the whole financial sector.

21. But we cannot scale AI in finance by building tools alone. We need people who know how to use them, question them, govern them and improve them.

a. I am heartened that ABS will strengthen the MOU it signed with IBF and NTUC’s Financial and Professional Services Cluster (of Unions) in 2024, to help ABS members equip their workforce with critical AI skills through IBF-recognised programmes.

b. IBF is also partnering financial institutions and training providers like NTUC LearningHub to train more than 100,000 finance professionals in AI skills over the next three years.

22. We must also equip finance professionals to use AI safely and responsibly.

a. IBF has worked with ABS and the NUS Asian Institute of Digital Finance to launch training programmes on the responsible use of AI for the financial sector.

23. At the same time, we must ensure that our workforce remains resilient.

a. AI will change jobs – some tasks will be automated, some roles will be redesigned, and new ones will emerge.

b. The real measure of success of AI adoption is not just the productivity it creates, but whether workers can move with the technology as jobs change.

24. Our local banks — DBS, OCBC and UOB — will serve as lighthouse institutions.

a. They have pledged to partner IBF to equip their employees with foundational AI skills; redesign jobs where AI has the greatest impact; support upskilling, reskilling and redeployment into good jobs; and give young talent structured exposure to applied AI and financial-sector skills.

b. To date, these lighthouse institutions have trained over 26,000 of their employees in foundational AI skills. This is close to 80% of their workforce.

c. IBF and MAS will continue to work with financial institutions to co-develop workforce interventions.

d. NTUC, together with the financial sector unions, will play a vital role in safeguarding workers’ interests and ensuring training pathways remain accessible to all.

25. Trusted financial centres cannot stay static. But they also cannot allow innovation to outrun governance.

26. MAS will soon consult on a new pathway for fund innovation within our retail funds regulatory framework.

a. We will introduce a new category and process for non-traditional funds to help fund managers bring such funds to market more quickly.

b. For most proposals of new fund types, MAS will determine the necessary guardrails for their issuance in about three months. This is significantly quicker than the current process.

c. Once the guardrails are established, funds of the same type can be authorised even faster in three weeks, if they meet the requirements.

d. Our objective is not innovation at all costs – it is trusted innovation at greater speed.

i. Investor safeguards will remain important.

ii. Funds must still meet core requirements such as governance and asset safekeeping. Their underlying assets should also be based on publicly traded securities and financial derivatives.

iii. The guardrails for these funds will be tailored to address the unique risks posed by each fund type, with enhanced disclosures on novel features, risk profiles and target customer segments.

e. This is the balance Singapore must strike: support innovation, but anchor it in trust.

Connecting finance to people and the real economy

27. The third priority is serving people and the real economy.

a. A successful financial centre must serve global capital well. But it must also serve its own people and businesses well.

b. The final test of trust is whether it works well in everyday life.

28. Payments are one important example. When payments become faster, more interoperable and richer in data, consumers, merchants, businesses and government services will all benefit.

29. Since its launch, PayNow has become a cornerstone of our payments landscape, used daily by consumers and businesses.

30. But as consumer and business needs evolve, so must our national payment rails.

31. MAS, ABS and industry partners are therefore working together to enhance Singapore’s instant payments capabilities under PayNow Generation 2. This is to make our national payments infrastructure more seamless, accessible and efficient.

32. I am pleased to announce that MAS and ABS are today publishing a report titled “PayNow Generation 2: Defining the Next Wave of Innovation for Singapore’s Instant Payments System”. The report identifies four possible areas of enhancement.

a. First, we will improve inter-operability for consumers.

i. Today, PayNow users and NETS QR merchants operate on separate payment rails, which can create friction at the point of payment.

ii. We will pilot inter-operability between them, so that consumers can scan and pay at any merchant regardless of which scheme the merchant uses.

iii. We will pilot this by the end of this year. Beyond this, we will also continue to advance inter-operability and access among more commercial payment schemes.

b. Second, we will improve the online checkout experience for consumers.

i. Through deep-linking within PayNow QR codes, we can reduce the steps needed to complete a payment.

ii. Merchants also benefit from smoother online checkouts.

iii. We aim to roll out this initiative within a year.

c. Third, we will explore the use of PayNow for larger-value public-sector transactions.

i. Government agencies today face constraints in PayNow around transaction limits.

ii. We will work with government agencies to sandbox solutions for this next year.

d. Fourth, we will develop additional capabilities to support business needs.

i. These include request-to-pay and structured data features for automated reconciliation, helping businesses reduce manual processes and improve efficiency.

ii. We will also explore a dedicated micro-payments rail for high volume, small-value transactions. And we will begin laying the groundwork for agentic commerce.

iii. These enhancements will take more time, and will involve changes to our underlying infrastructure and national scheme rules.

iv. We will nevertheless commence foundational work this year, so that our payments infrastructure is ready for the way commerce will work in the future.

33. PayNow Generation 2 is about ensuring Singapore’s national payment schemes and rails are fit for purpose and ready for the future. We will publish a further report at the end of the year setting out detailed implementation steps.

34. The same principle applies to how we serve seniors.

a. Singapore now has one in five citizens aged 65 and above.

b. As our population ages, the financial needs of seniors will become even more important.

35. But seniors are not a homogenous group.

a. Some are digitally confident. Some need more help.

36. Banks must respond to this diversity.

37. For seniors, trust is built not only through better apps. It is built through clearer choices, safer systems, easier processes, and better support when it matters.

a. I commend the ABS for making a concerted effort to examine how the sector can better serve an ageing society.

b. The five SERVE outcomes that the ABS has identified will guide industry actions, and the practical playbook demonstrates how banks will continue to serve their senior customers well^[1].

38. This is what it means for finance to serve people well: not just faster transactions or more sophisticated products, but services that remain accessible, safe and trusted across the entire financial sector.

Conclusion

39. The financial sector’s success has always depended on partnership – partnership between financial institutions, professionals, technology providers, industry associations, unions, and regulators.

40. We must stay bold, disciplined and united. This way, Singapore will not just remain a trusted financial centre. We will help shape the future of finance.

41. Thank you.