Singapore Turns Focus on AI Governance at Fintech Festival

Singapore is aiming to become the region’s hub for safe and sustainable artificial intelligence (AI). The goal is to ensure successful outcomes for the significant investments now pouring in for AI and its related technologies.

This was the key message from the recent Singapore Fintech Festival (SFF 2024), where SoftServe was an exhibitor. Singapore’s key financial and regulatory bodies emphasized the importance of establishing AI governance standards for the financial services industry (FSI).

As has been the case with all emerging technologies, local regulators are keen to emphasize the importance of developing robust governance frameworks. They know from experience that these frameworks will lead FSI institutions to adopt AI strategies that manage innovation responsibly.

Integrating early AI protocols

To secure safe standards, regulators believe it is crucial financial institutions embed AI governance early in the AI development cycle. A proactive approach not only streamlines potential bottlenecks but also avoids the later AI governance lapses that can otherwise inflate AI costs for companies.

Despite this guidance, many organizations still do not recognize the urgency of early AI governance deployment. This was confirmed in SoftServe’s recent global study with Forrester Consulting, which found only 24% of Singaporean organizations have implemented an AI governance policy (whether developed internally or with an external partner).

By establishing early governance protocols, organizations can manage risks more effectively while AI technologies are still in development. This foresight allows companies to predict and mitigate potential compliance issues, optimizing their return on investment (ROI) sustainably and avoiding fines and other penalties.

SoftServe’s Responsible AI demo, developed in collaboration with local regulators, exemplifies this approach by enabling the creation of test datasets for evaluating various Generative AI chat agents. This reduces the entry barriers for financial services to test and retest their AI systems, ensuring compliance and efficiency from the outset.

AI governance and the cloud

For many FSI companies that expect to build compliant and secure AI governance policies, an early commitment to robust cloud infrastructure is therefore the way forward.

Hybrid multi-cloud solutions are particularly effective for regulatory compliance, as they offer data localization and provide robust security measures for protecting sovereign, sensitive and proprietary information. This setup ensures local financial institutions meet stringent regulatory requirements from governing bodies and avoid costly legal repercussions from data breaches or AI misuse. It also enables quicker response times to potential issues, minimizing financial and operational losses.

A technology partner like SoftServe can be the key to helping FSI firms embed AI governance policies into their cloud infrastructure systems, in a way that allows financial organizations to scale governance across their infrastructure.

As a holistic IT consulting and digital services provider, SoftServe provides cross-capabilities expertise tailored to an organization’s needs. Our deep industry experience saw our spokesperson, Wells Vaughan, CTO APAC, presenting at SFF 2024 on the topic of AI governance and the cloud, where he highlighted our knowledge of integrating AI and cloud technologies.

Partner benefits

SoftServe's strategic partnerships with industry leaders like NVIDIA and major cloud providers (Google Cloud, Microsoft Azure, etc.) further strengthen our ability to optimize cloud and Gen AI solutions for banking and financial services organizations.

As Singapore strengthens its ecosystem for AI governance and regulation, it will be crucial for financial institutions to collaborate with the right technology partners. These partners should have expertise in both international and local regulatory standards, providing the deep-dive knowledge needed to navigate Singapore’s tech and regulatory landscape.

Tailored solutions from experienced partners can then help companies achieve their AI development goals effectively. Financial institutions should also partner with forward-thinking technology providers like SoftServe, whose proven expertise helps navigate evolving landscapes to achieve sustainable success in AI initiatives.

Sustainable AI future

From Dipen Mehta, SoftServe’s Head of Financial Services APAC, and his participation in SFF 2024’s closed-door Elevandi Insights Forum, to our recent partnership with NVIDIA for Gen AI solutions, we are committed to furthering technology innovation for Singapore. This includes developing digital concierge services, multimodal retrieval-augmented generation (RAG) systems, and other content-creator solutions.

SoftServe is committed to driving innovation and compliance in the financial services industry and, as we move forward, continue to be a strong technology leader shaping the safe and sustainable future of Singapore’s FSI and AI development. Contact us to discover more about how we can make AI work safely and successfully for you.

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