ASEAN Financial Innovation Network adds advisory council

The ASEAN Financial Innovation Network (AFIN) has set up a Strategic Advisory Council (SAC) to support the overall development of AFIN and API Exchange (APIX)

“APIX has been at the forefront of changing the way the financial services industry innovates. The coming together of such visionary organisations, such as the members of the SAC, will help us develop a better understanding of market dynamics and achieve more in our quest to engender greater financial innovation and inclusion globally. We are looking forward to working very closely with SAC members along with members of the Board and our consortium partners to create value for the industry,” said Manish Diwaan, MD, AFIN.

The SAC, chaired by AFIN’s independent board director, Supriya Sen. will advise the board on matters ranging from technology to global expansion and support AFIN in its journey in using APIX to promote the broader adoption of financial technology innovations for financial inclusion across ASEAN and beyond.

Members include:

BNY Mellon, the world’s largest custodian bank with US$35.8 trillion under custody and/or administration. The bank has joined AFIN and the SAC to advise the board on global expansion and to support the further development of APIX as a means to facilitate fintech and bank collaborations.

“Singapore has continued to cement its position as a global hub for innovation in financial services due to the leadership of the Monetary Authority of Singapore. We are excited to deepen our relationships with MAS and other financial leaders to drive innovation and collaboration. Given our role of providing infrastructure for the world’s financial markets, our early adoption of emerging technologies and our partnerships with fintechs and other ecosystem participants, we can help strengthen the APIX platform,” said Roman Regelman, Head of Digital, BNY Mellon.

Amazon Web Services (AWS), the world’s most comprehensive and broadly adopted cloud platform. AFIN has selected AWS as the cloud service provider for APIX. Fintechs of APIX are expected to take advantage of the opportunity to gain access to AWS credits, training and support. Financial institutions of APIX will also be invited to attend exclusive workshops conducted by AWS and learn more about how to build and sustain an innovation-focused culture.

“We look forward to working with AFIN to further enable the collaboration between fintechs and financial institutions across ASEAN and internationally, allowing them to benefit from the scale and cost efficiencies that the cloud offers”, said Frank Fallon, VP, Worldwide Financial Services at Amazon Web Services.

“APIX members will be better positioned to tap into the agility, security, resiliency and breadth and depth of services offered by the AWS Cloud, further supporting their mission of developing innovative solutions to address business challenges across the financial services industry.”

To represent the voice of the fintechs, the Singapore Fintech Association (SFA) and Philippines-based startup Brankas have also joined the SAC. Both organisations will support APIX through fintech and developer meetups across ASEAN.

“It is an honour for SFA to play an active role to connect fintechs with banks across ASEAN to promote financial inclusion, and in the process, elevate the entire ASEAN fintech ecosystem,” said Chia Hock Lai, President of SFA.

“Brankas and AFIN share a common vision that an open banking API economy in Asia is a catalyst for fintech innovation and inclusion. We founded Brankas to address these inefficiencies through technology infrastructure: building the 'API layer' with bank partners and making Open API products easy for online businesses to use in their day-to-day workflow. By working with AFIN to encourage APIX platform adoption, Brankas can help grow awareness, discover new use cases, and contribute to a more innovative Asian fintech ecosystem,” said Todd Schweitzer, Co-Founder & CEO, Brankas.

AMTD Foundation and Mastercard, AFIN’s corporate founding members, are also represented in the SAC. Rachel Freeman, Chief Strategy & Innovation Officer, and Tobias Puehse, VP Innovation, will represent their organisations respectively.

AFIN said that it would be adding more partners to the SAC in coming months.

AFIN is a non-profit organisation founded by the ASEAN Bankers Association (ABA), the World Bank’s IFC and the Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS). Its corporate founding members are AMTD Foundation and Mastercard. AFIN’s objective is to support experimentation and collaboration between financial institutions and financial technology service providers so as to promote greater financial innovation and inclusion in ASEAN and beyond.

APIX, the flagship product of AFIN, is the organisation's open-architecture platform to support such collaborations across the region. The global cloud-based platform enables financial institutions and fintechs to discover one another on a curated global marketplace, design experiments collaboratively in the sandbox and deploy innovative solutions rapidly at a lower cost.