More than 200 participants, including startups, accelerators, incubators and venture capitalists from Silicon Valley, global investors and banks, as well as regulators from Singapore converged at Stanford University in California, USA on 17 November 2015 for a conference themed "Smart Nation, Silicon Valley Technology and Connectivity Inclusion".

Organised by SMU’s Sim Kee Boon Institute for Financial Economics (SKBI) and Business Families Institute (BFI), the conference discussed and explored Silicon Valley technologies and their potential, and how they could be relevant and beneficial to Singapore’s Smart Nation programme. The conference also served as a platform for Silicon Valley to learn about this initiative in Singapore.

Professor David Lee, Executive/Academic Director of SKBI, said “Singapore’s Smart Nation initiative seeks to support better living, create more opportunities, and to support stronger communities. We believe that Financial Technology, or Fintech, will have an important role to play in realising the Smart Nation vision.

“Fintech is an emerging trend and a key research area for SKBI. The rise of Fintech companies has increased the awareness of the disruption and opportunities in areas such as Digital Banking, Internet Finance and Blockchain. We are predicting for the next five years, alternative finance will be an area worthy of attention. Silicon Valley, being at the forefront of financial and smart technological innovation and creation, is an ideal venue for Singapore to learn about the latest technologies and their applicability to our national initiative.”  

In his speech on ‘Driving Digital Transformation’, Mr Piyush Gupta, CEO of DBS Group and Chairman of SKBI said Asia is setting the pace in digital adoption, mainly because of its demography, as almost half the world’s internet users are in Asia. While many of the financial innovation technologies were founded and developed in USA, the pace and scale of adoption of such technologies in Asia have been spectacular. He cited Alipay (an online payment system by Alibaba), Yu’E Bao (a money market fund that allows Alipay’s account holders to invest their excess cash in the fund) and MyBank (an online bank) as examples.

Mr Gupta said that besides the non-banks, some of the best examples of digital adoption in the banking industry take place in Asia. He cited the example of Industrial and Commercial Bank of China, currently the largest bank in the world, which has become the second largest e-commerce site in China within 14 months.

He then shared what DBS has done in terms of digital transformation. These include: how to acquire customers digitally and electronically; how to change the transacting profile for customers by re-imagining the customers’ journey; and how to engage customers in ways that traditionally they were unable to.

[Caption: Ms Jacqueline Poh, Managing Director of IDA, spoke on Singapore’s Smart Nation initiative.]

Ms Jacqueline Poh, Managing Director of Info-communications Development Authority of Singapore (IDA), shared in her address on ‘Singapore Smart Nation - Our Way of Thinking about Innovation’ the various smart initiatives that have been rolled out for experimentation and implementation. These include telehealth and elderly monitoring alert system under Smart Healthcare; autonomous vehicle-enabled mobility under Smart Mobility; and smart homes under Smart Living.

She added, “Singapore’s Smart Nation is an exciting vision for global technology builders with big, bold ideas to come and co-create an urban future with us. It is our unique way of thinking about innovation. Singapore aims to pull together our assets of world-beating connectivity, open data, big corporates, entrepreneurs, risk capital, government demand, academics and researchers to develop new solutions to tackle some of the most pressing challenges facing urban populations today.”

Mr Christopher Andrea Cheang, Consul-General of The Republic of Singapore to USA (San Francisco), delivered the Opening Address, while Mr Sopnendu Mohanty, Chief Fintech Officer of Monetary Authority of Singapore gave the Closing Address.   

[Caption: Professor David Lee (top, extreme right), Executive/Academic Director of SKBI, and Professor Annie Koh (bottom, extreme left), Academic Director of BFI, moderated panel discussions on “Smart Finance and FinTech” and “Smart Investing for Impact” respectively.]

Four panel discussions were held at the conference, with practitioners, investors and regulators discussing a range of topics, including Smart Finance and Fin Tech, Smart Investing for Impact, Smart Security, Privacy and Blockchain, and Smart Infrastructure: Transport, Energy and the Environment.

There were also presentations from tech companies and startups with products or services which could be of interest for the Smart Nation initiative.

This conference was supported by DBS Bank, Oversea-Chinese Banking Corporation (Singapore), Standard Chartered Bank, Hengchang Litong Investment Management, Infosys Finacle and Sandaire.

[Featured photo: Mr Piyush Gupta, CEO of DBS Group and Chairman of SKBI, delivered a keynote address on driving digital transformation.]