Fintech alliance round-up: 15 November 2017
Shoot it in the right direction, make making it your intention, live those fintech dreams, scheme those schemes, and hit me with those alliances and teams. Our friendly round-up features ASEAN Fintech Network, Monetary Authority of Singapore, Polish Financial Supervision Authority and Hong Kong Monetary Authority.
Welcome to the ASEAN Fintech Network (AFN), a new platform for hubs in the region, brought together to address the “biggest problems” facing the industry in the region. The idea, unsurprisingly, is to provide a place to share best practices and “come with actionable items to support each other”.
AFN comprises representations from fintech hubs in Malaysia, Lithuania, Nigeria, Indonesia, the Philippines and Vietnam. So, you don’t have to be part of the ASEAN region to be in it.
Lots of love for Monetary Authority of Singapore (Image source: depositphotos.com)
The Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS) has been busy with two deals. First up is one with the Polish Financial Supervision Authority (KNF), where they have signed an agreement for co-operation and referrals between the two regulators.
The framework enables both regulators to refer companies to their counterparts and outlines the support to better understand the regulatory regime in each jurisdiction.
In the second deal, MAS and the Hong Kong Monetary Authority (HKMA) exchanged a memorandum of understanding (MoU) to develop the Global Trade Connectivity Network (GTCN), a cross-border infrastructure based on distributed ledger technology (DLT), to digitalise trade and trade finance between the two cities and “potentially with an aim to expanding the network in the region and globally”.
GTCN is the first joint innovation project arising from their co-operation agreement signed last month. It is expected to go live by early 2019, to tie in with the targeted go-live dates of the trade finance modules on the national trade platform in Singapore and Hong Kong’s trade finance platform.
