Author: Fintech News Singapore

FWD Group, a a pan-Asian life insurance business, has announced the appointment of Adrian Vincent as Chief Executive Officer for Singapore. Vincent joined FWD Singapore in 2019 as General Manager, Life Business, successfully establishing the company’s financial adviser channel and now executing on its high-net-worth strategy. He is an insurance industry leader with over 20 years of experience, including serving as Deputy CEO at a multi national insurance company based in Singapore. Vincent succeeds Khor Kee Eng, who is taking on a new role in the FWD Group headquarters, and will be reporting to Binayak Dutta, Managing Director, Emerging Markets,…

Grab and Singtel’s GXS Bank has appointed Muthukrishnan Ramaswami as its Group Chief Executive Officer, effective from 7 February. The appointment is subject to regulatory approval. Fondly known as Ramu, the new appointee will be focused on GXS’ ambition to serve more individuals and small businesses in Singapore and Malaysia as well as lead regional partnerships. A veteran in the financial services industry, Ramu has more than 35 years of experience across a range of financial businesses including exchanges, clearing houses as well as retail and wholesale banking. He has held regional and international leadership roles across Singapore, Hong Kong,…

Small and medium enterprises (SMEs) are innovative, agile and drive competition. However, they’re often shuffled to the back of the line when it comes to accessing credit. Lending to SMEs can be risky and time-consuming. Traditional financial institutions often require paperwork-heavy application processes and may find it difficult to execute credit risk decisioning without human intervention. Forty-four percent of SMEs need funding immediately to meet operating expenses, and 56% look to credit to grow their business. But when accessing credit quickly can mean the difference between a business flourishing or floundering, what are the options? Increasingly, disruptive lenders, including fintechs…

The integration between HSBC Insurance Singapore and AXA Insurance is now complete and has begun operating as a combined entity – HSBC Life Singapore. The merger and rebranding will have no impact to the terms of any of the policies in-force underwritten by either AXA Singapore or HSBC Insurance Singapore. The bank said in a statement that this “strongly positions HSBC to grow its insurance business in Singapore and expand its customer reach in the health and wealth space”. Announced in August 2021, the US$529 million deal was inked to double the bank’s life insurance market share and was the first…

Ride-hailing giant and superapp Grab has appointed Member of Parliament (MP) Tin Pei Ling as its Director of Public Affairs and Policy for Singapore. Tin had begun serving in her new role in January and her new appointment came to light when she had attended Grab’s Chinese New Year lunch for its drivers and delivery partners at the Singapore Expo. Tin had sidestepped questions regarding her new role and directed them towards the Grab team according to a report by The Straits Times. As of now, Grab has not issued an official statement through its press center. Grab said in…

Payments service provider FIS announced that it will power real-time payment transactions for Singapore’s digital bank Trust. Trust Bank will utilise the FIS Open Payments Framework (OPF) which is an agile and innovative ISO 20022-native real-time payments platform to facilitate payment transactions for the bank, including traditional and instant or real-time payments. This cloud native solution will allow Trust to scale payments volumes as the bank continues to grow its business. Following its launch in September 2022, Trust’s customer base has scaled rapidly to more than 400,000 customers with over 6 million transactions during 2022. “Trust offers transparent, easy-to-use services…

Funding to cryptocurrency companies plummeted 42.5% in 2022, plunging from an all-time high (ATH) of US$37.08 billion secured in 2021 to US$21.26 billion last year, a new report by crypto data aggregator CoinGecko shows. While the drop may appear significant, 2022’s figure indicates that crypto funding remained strong last year despite a challenging macroeconomic environment and market turmoil. In comparison, during the previous “crypto winter” of 2018-2019, crypto investments tumbled by a staggering 72.3%, plunging from US$16.2 billion to just US$4.5 billion in 2019, the report says. The relatively better performance in 2022 comes amid continued growth and innovation in…

Fiserv, a payment solutions provider for merchants in Singapore, announced that its local operating entity has been granted a Major Payment Institution (MPI) license by the Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS). The license allows Fiserv to provide merchant acquisition services as well as domestic and cross-border money transfer services. Fiserv provides end-to-end payment acceptance solutions for small businesses in Singapore as well as solutions for large enterprise clients. The MPI license permits the continued offering of merchant acquiring services in Singapore and will allow Fiserv to support new payment flows for its clients including cross-border funds transfer services and real-time…

Samsung Wallet will be rolled out in eight new markets, including Singapore, Malaysia, India, Hong Kong, Taiwan, Australia, Brazil, and Canada starting at the end of January. The wallet is a platform that enables Galaxy users to organise digital keys, boarding passes, identification cards and more in one app. It also allows users to add their vaccine record to Samsung Wallet using using CommonHealth. Additionally, the Samsung Wallet has a digital assets card that allows users to view their crypto assets and its total value. Samsung said in a statement that the availability and launch of specific features and supported…

Southeast Asian superapp Grab announced that it has promoted Philipp Kandal to Chief Product Officer, effective 1 February 2023. As Chief Product Officer, Philipp will oversee the product, design and analytics teams as well as lead the product vision and strategy for Grab. Philipp joined the company in October 2019 to lead the engineering and data science teams for Geo, the vertical that powers location-based intelligence and services. Soon, he became the head of the entire Geo organisation, managing the business, product and tech functions. In 2022, his scope was expanded to oversee the fulfillment product and tech teams that…

A majority of financial services firms now view digital transformation as essential to their business and are already looking to the next wave of technology to help get ahead, according to a new report by Broadridge. In the 2023 Digital Transformation and Next-Gen Tech study of 500 C-suite executives and their direct reports across the buy side and sell side globally, 71% said artificial intelligence (AI) is now significantly changing the way they work, and 60% agree that within ten years, blockchain and distributed ledger technology (DLT) will become the core of financial markets infrastructure. Despite a more challenging economic…

Despite an ongoing crypto winter, the global decentralized finance (DeFi) market has remained strong and resilient, maintaining its dynamism with sustained venture capital (VC) funding activity, increased user adoption, and encouraging signs of institutional interest, a new report by HashKey Capital says. The 2022 DeFi Ecosystem Landscape Report, released by the crypto fund in December 2022, looks at the current state of the DeFi industry and shares the outlook for 2023. According to the report, 2022 saw significant growth in the ecosystem of financial applications being developed in smart contracts. Companies put the brakes on marketing spends to instead focus…

2022 saw the start of a significant consolidation phase for the fintech sector, a trend which is set to accelerate this year as the economic climate continues to deteriorate in the face of elevated inflation, higher interest rates and reduced investment, a new analysis by fintech research company Whitesight says. In its annual Fintech M&A Roundup, Whitesight looks at mergers and acquisitions (M&A) activity in 2022, providing a summary of notable deals across key fintech segments and revealing consolidation trends that emerged in 2022. According to the report, 2022 was a year of notable M&A activity for the global fintech…

Payments firm Flywire announced that it has secured in-principle approval for a Major Payment Institution license from the Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS). With the in-principle approval, Flywire will be able to provide domestic money transfer services, cross-border money transfer services and merchant acquisition services. Flywire has been actively growing its footprint in the Asia Pacific region by expanding its team with many open roles available across all departments in Singapore, Tokyo, Shanghai and more. The payments firm had also acquired Cohort Go, which has a strong regional focus in APAC in addition to its partner relationships globally. Frans Wiwanto,…

Pilon, a Singaporean fintech providing cloud-based supply chain financing system, has secured US$5.2 million in both debt and equity during a seed funding round. The round was led by Wavemaker Partners with participation from Octava and Polaris Kin. Pilon said that it will use the funds raised to improve its digital product offerings, expand its footprint in existing markets like the Philippines and Cambodia, and make their foray into either Vietnam, Thailand or Indonesia within the next year. The company is also aiming to scale up its business acquisition and expand its workforce with the fresh funds. Pilon added that…

Blockchain software firm ConsenSys announced that it will layoff 11% of its workforce to adjust to challenging and uncertain market conditions in a blog post. ConsenSys’ CEO Joseph Lubin said that the 96 employees being laid off will receive “extensive support and generous packages as they transition to their next journey”. This includes severance packages based on tenure, an extended option exercise window from 12 months to 36 months, personalised support from an external placement agency and more. Moving forward, ConsenSys will focus on a MetaMask end-user and developer platform that provides the digital authority foundation for people to build on,…

HPS, a global provider of payment solutions and services, announced the opening of a new office in Singapore to support its continued growth in Asia. The company first established a presence in Singapore in 2017 to take advantage of Asia’s rapidly evolving payments sector. Over the past five years, HPS has onboarded a significant number of financial institutions in the region. Today, the group’s new office will allow HPS to onboard more than 80 employees in support of its continuous operations in the region. Revenue coming from the Middle East and Asia regions account for approximately 25% of HPS’ total…

TripleA, a crypto payment gateway licensed by the Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS) has appointed Elodie Trichet as its Chief Operating Officer. A payments veteran, Elodie brings over 18 years of international online payments experience globally. Elodie was Head of Partnerships at Adyen as a founding employee, and Head of Product Strategy Enterprises & Financial Partnership at Airwallex. Before joining TripleA, she was the Director of Product Strategy, Acquiring and Partnerships at Smartpay. “TripleA is truly at the forefront of driving innovation in payments, with crypto solutions that bring great value to corporations. I am incredibly excited to build…

Inypay, a soon-to-be-launched Singaporean neobank, announced that it has appointed Neeraj Pandey as its Chief Business Officer. In his new role, Neeraj will lead and oversee Inypay’s overall business strategy and operations. He will also be responsible for developing and executing the company’s go-to-market strategy, including product positioning and pricing. Neeraj brings over two decades of experience in banking and fintech across Southeast Asia, UK, and India to the role. He had previously served as the Chief Commercial Officer at Singaporean fintech SOCASH where he was responsible for managing stakeholders and executing new products with strategic partners. Prior to that,…

Singapore’s digital wealth management platform Endowus has partnered with global fintech firm iCapital to expand its private market investment offering for accredited investors in Singapore and Hong Kong. Endowus’ clients will have access to a set of institutional-quality private markets initiatives within private equity, private debt, and real assets. Through this partnership, Endowus will be able to leverage iCapital’s technology and solutions to enhance the operational efficiency of the entire investment process in these segments. According to Endowus, it has nearly tripled the number of accredited investors on its platform since April 2021. Gregory Van, CEO of Endowus said, “At…