Finance leaders flag governance risks with fast growing fintech systems

Finance leaders discuss macroeconomics, AI, new forms of money, policy sustainability, and more.

The financial technology (fintech) industry faces governance and sustainability risk as the sector continues to explore and advance the use of artificial intelligence (AI), asset tokenisation, and electronic payments, amongst others.

“Digital technologies centered on foundational architecture, electronic payments, digital identities, trusted data, asset tokenization and programmable money as the basis for the new financial system and as a key enabler for not just financial activities, but almost all parts of the economy,” said Ravi Menon, chairman of the board of directors, Global Finance & Technology Network (GFTN).  

Menon is also an ambassador for climate action in Singapore and a former managing director of the Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS).

“So I think we're in the cusp of a next stage of a quantum leap,” Menon said at Singapore Fintech Festival 2025 during the "Steering the Global Future" session held at the Festival stage on 14 November.

Whilst advancements in fintech bring tremendous benefits, they face regulation and sustainability challenges, he told leaders from Bank for International Settlements (BIS) and Ant Group during the session, which was moderated by writer and professor Dr. Razeen Sally.

Agustin Carstens, former BIS general manager, said: “I think regulators and authorities have to embrace innovation now. There are some examples where the authorities have kept up with the pace of innovation, and you can see that in their ecosystems that they're producing. MAS has embraced innovation, invested a lot in innovation, and developed a very strong human capital to be able to do the job.

The same needs to happen in many other latitudes. We have to embrace innovation in such a way that we can assure that adoption is safe, is appropriate, and welfare is improving without being a major stumbling block in the process of innovation.”

Regarding sustainability, Menon hopes that AI in fintech can decarbonise as AI data centres use substantial amounts of energy.

“It cannot be eating up all the world's energy resources just to do what we are doing much more efficiently. So that stage of AI's development is what's going to make sure it's sustainable,” he said.

Aside from AI, he still cited that electronic payments and asset tokenisation have made transactions more efficient.

Eric Jing, chairman of Ant Group, described the trend: “Agenetic AI will be booming. I think today, agents already have you to purchase maybe a product or help you make a reservation and paying a deposit, so that's a pulling force for agentic pay to ensure a smooth customer experience, right? But that's not the whole thing.

That's just the beginning. We're seeing the agents in the multi agent systems, or genetic systems, have been working together, could perform even complex tasks, right? So by meaning performing tasks, they definitely will be revenue created, and we receive a payment. Then, then payment will be be allocating to all agents working together through a predetermined terms or through a smart contract. I think the agendic pay we have definitely will be booming, very, very quickly.

I think a few scenarios on AI, if you talk about tokenization. I think two things. Number one is tokenization of money. Tokenization of money definitely will be enabling a global, real time settlement. You know, cross-border. You know that that's their particularly benefiting, the SMEs or companies catching global trade sooner, tokenize money, the number one, on payment side, payment side.

Secondly, on our asset side, the tokenization of various assets onto the chain, we're enabling kind of trade off the asset of the tokens across market, across institutions and much efficiently, much transparently and credibly,"

The panel discussed the future of fintech. Below are the snippets from their conversation:

Sally: Welcome to the panel on Steering the Global Future. The questions I have for the panel really revolve around this next decade of global growth, innovation centered what kind of rules of the game will this innovation centered growth require, and how can we write or rewrite those rules of the game in real time?

Jing: When we talk about AI, their implication on our financial services, you know, financial services really is data rich and language heavy industry. So by saying that Gen AI going to have profound impact on reshipping the financial services. So I think I can think of there are a few scenarios may happen.

One is the impact on AI on financial services, not about one domain, and many, many companies already using that, for example, to AI for a risk management because have to bet analyze on our unstructured data, and also use that for anti-fraud for your customer experience. So definitely AI is going to impact every domain. Other financial services, I think that's greatly boosting the efficiency of the financial institutions, and then benefits will be passed upon to their consumer side, their customer side, making that more easily accessible and on the consumer on customer side, I think eventually would be aI everyone.

Sally: Let me turn to Augustine Carstens for his perspective on the future of money and future of public policy and regulation related to money.

Carstens: Money needs to have three characteristics. Could you mention them? Medium of exchange, store of value, unit of account. That change. I mean, you need, you need a representation. Of value that performs those roles. Now, the real issue is, do we have money with the technological representation that society and modernity demands today, and also, what are the possibilities that technology allows, as you mentioned, through time and money at the beginning, was just exchange of goods and services.

Then we had paper. Now we have digital statements in imbalances, and now technology opens a whole new set of possibilities. At the same time, you see that the economy and society is evolving today. What society demands, for example, to all what Eric was saying that we're going to live with AI, we need to have a representation of money that can that can raise to the challenge of those type of transactions, with one condition, that money continues to be safe and trustworthy. Now, therefore, the huge challenge we face as society, and mostly in the in the public sector, together with the collaboration of the private sector, is to produce the representation to to produce money with the technological representation, where all different types of money have those characteristics.

Sally: What do you think have been the really major shifts that have reshaped economic growth to date, before we come to the next decade?

Menon: I think from about 2015 onwards, we started seeing that. I think the starting point was the great was the it was the mobile phone which gave a lot of mobility, which combined massive amounts of processing power in the hands of virtually everyone who could own a device, the expansion of broadband connectivity and the embedding of the internet in the mobile device coming together was a powerful combination that allowed and enabled many other financial developments to take place.

And then we have faster payment systems emerging everywhere we had, then cross border connectivity, which is, I think, still work in progress, but at least it has been demonstrated well beyond the pilot stage that two countries can connect for electronic payments and make that make this happen. This has got tremendous economic benefits that we've already seen in terms of increased productivity, lower efficient, higher efficiency and lower risk. It has democratized, because it has enabled small and medium enterprises and individuals to transcend national borders without having to go abroad or set up physical presence, that you can actually do business.