In remarks to the Global FinTech Festival, the Monetary Authority of Singapore called for stronger governance, controls and cyber defenses as artificial intelligence moves into large-scale use across financial services. Singapore financial institutions are deploying AI in areas including fraud detection, credit underwriting, risk management and regulatory compliance, while increasingly autonomous applications will require clear accountability, oversight and runtime safeguards. MAS is seeking to spread adoption beyond the largest institutions through Pathfin.ai, which matches firms with validated AI solutions and now has more than 300 participants. It is also testing AI models using cross-bank and public-private data to identify suspicious accounts and transactions in near real time, with findings expected by the end of 2026. Its proposed AI risk management guidelines would set supervisory expectations, including risk materiality assessments, while industry handbooks provide implementation practices and the Safeguards for Agentic Finance at Runtime framework addresses controls over AI agents. The authority warned that high-severity Common Vulnerabilities and Exposures rose sixfold in 2026 to 2,200 compared with the preceding three-year average, while CrowdStrike reported an 89% increase in AI-enabled cyberattacks. Although successful breaches have not risen at the same rate, MAS urged financial institutions to strengthen multilayered defenses and use AI for vulnerability detection, code scanning, threat monitoring, patching and incident response.

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