In a speech at the Association of Banks in Singapore annual dinner, the Monetary Authority of Singapore set out a broad agenda to strengthen Singapore’s role as a financial hub through market infrastructure, responsible innovation and payments modernization. The main measures were a forthcoming consultation on a Protected Cell Company framework for alternative risk transfer, the establishment of the Future of Finance Institute to support practical adoption of artificial intelligence and tokenisation, a new faster pathway for non-traditional retail funds, and the publication with the Association of Banks in Singapore of a report on PayNow Generation 2. On capital markets and risk capacity, the speech linked earlier work on the Growth Capital Workgroup with new infrastructure for gold and insurance-linked risk transfer. Singapore Exchange will establish a gold clearing system by the end of the year with six initial clearing banks, while the Monetary Authority of Singapore will begin providing vaulting facilities for foreign central banks and sovereigns. The planned Protected Cell Company consultation would support structures that ring-fence assets and liabilities within separate cells under one entity, with the aim of making captive insurance and insurance-linked securities transactions faster and less costly. On innovation, the new Future of Finance Institute will act as a national innovation centre for the financial sector through a knowledge hub, an innovation garage, industry sandboxes and implementation toolkits. The authority also said it will soon consult on a retail funds innovation pathway under which new non-traditional fund types could have tailored guardrails set in about three months, with subsequent funds of the same type authorized in three weeks if they meet those requirements, while preserving governance, safekeeping and disclosure safeguards. For payments, the PayNow Generation 2 report identifies four upgrade areas: interoperability between PayNow and NETS QR, to be piloted by the end of the year; deep-linking in PayNow QR codes for online checkout within a year; sandboxing solutions next year for larger-value public-sector transactions; and longer-term business features including request-to-pay, structured data, a possible micropayments rail and groundwork for agentic commerce. The Monetary Authority of Singapore said a further report setting out detailed implementation steps will be published at the end of the year.

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