Speeches
Keynote Address by Minister Josephine Teo at the Launch of the Global Institute of Finance, Technology, and Society (GIFTS)
30 May 2026
Prof Ho Teck Hua
Prof Christian Wolfrum
Prof Thomas Sargent
Prof Jun Yang
Prof Lin William Cong
Distinguished guests, colleagues, and friends
Good evening and thank you for inviting me.
I’d first like to congratulate the Nanyang Business School on your 30th anniversary.
It is a significant milestone for any organisation, and all the more so as NTU is marking the occasion with the launch of a new entity, the Global Institute for Finance, Technology and Society or GIFTS for short.
Over three decades, NBS has produced leaders who've gone on to make a meaningful difference in their organisations and in our broader society.
In Parliament, for example, Senior Minister of State Low Yen Ling has advocated strongly for Small and Medium Enterprises, sustainability, and lifelong learning. She told me that she was in the third batch to graduate from NBS.
Senior Minister of State Zaqy Mohamed championed the Progressive Wage Model, the Workplace Fairness Legislation and programmes to uplift the Malay/Muslim community. He told me that in his time with NBS, there was also a component that was conducted with Carnegie Mellon, and he belonged to that programme.
Suffice to say that NBS alumni have also helped Singapore navigate successive waves of technology change. You saw how the internet transformed commerce. You experienced how digital connectivity extended our economic frontier.
AI will be one of the defining forces of our time, and NBS alumni can help harness it to benefit our businesses and people. This will support efforts for Singapore to make the most of AI, as we have done with previous technologies.
In 2023, we set out our plans in the National AI Strategy and updated it a fortnight ago with refreshed priorities. The updates are a double-click, rather than a system reboot, fleshing out in greater detail where we see the biggest opportunities.
They are also designed to better support the National AI Council chaired by Prime Minister Lawrence Wong. Among other things, the Council will focus on National AI missions to move AI beyond experimentation into sector-wide transformation.
We have prioritised four sectors – Connectivity, Advanced Manufacturing, Healthcare and Finance, which together contribute over 40% of our GDP. Singapore has global standing in each of these sectors; the AI solutions tested and scaled here can therefore be relevant internationally.
At the Asia Tech Summit recently, I spoke about the exciting that has already begun in our connectivity and advanced manufacturing sectors. Let me say more today about our challenges and prospects in Finance.
The financial services sector contributes about 14% to our GDP and employs over 200,000 people. As a leading international financial centre in Asia, Singapore is home to many of the world's major financial institutions, all of whom are seeking to address the question of using AI effectively.
AI has the potential to expand the breadth and depth of our finance hub, strengthen financial resilience, and tackle increasingly sophisticated financial crime. These ambitions are important not just for Singapore, but for the world.
Several use cases are increasingly common. AI agents are beginning to automate complex compliance workflows or transact on behalf of their users. They can put together credit memos and flag suspicious transactions.
These developments point to a financial sector that will look quite different from what it is today. Strengthening our position as a trusted financial hub will require our institutions, regulators, and researchers to work with leaders in AI to tackle the most pressing concerns with fresh energy and imagination.
We will need new approaches to data sharing and risk management. We will need to develop and align best practices in deploying AI to ensure accuracy and robustness. We will also need to ensure people continue to do meaningful work.
These requirements will not be easy for single institutions to manage on their own. Partnerships will be key.
Take scams for example. There are too many of them, and every one of us knows someone who has been a victim.
MAS, GovTech and the Singapore Police Force have been collaborating with five banks to securely pool data and build AI models that help human investigators identify suspicious transactions earlier. It is a meaningful public-private partnership that seeks to address a real problem, complement human capabilities, and build trust in our financial systems.
We expect many more instances where AI will change how issues are identified and decisions are made. Even so, we must uphold the fundamentals, such as human or organisational accountability, oversight, and a duty of care to the people that we serve.
This brings me to the question of governance. Finance is a heavily regulated industry and is already familiar with good as well as bad governance. But AI has changed the tempo. Credit assessments, insurance underwriting, fraud detection – these are already being done with AI, and at a speed and scale that governance needs to match.
Prescriptive regulations, however well-intentioned, may struggle to keep up with developments or risk slowing innovation.
Instead, we must rethink governance and develop a principles-based approach anchored in fairness, ethics, accountability, and transparency.
To complement this, MAS has been working with the industry on Project MindForge, a practical toolkit that helps financial institutions understand and manage the risks that come with using AI, grounded in real case studies.
The goal is a shared framework for identifying and managing AI risk, and one that works across borders.
As AI monitors more transactions and behaviours in real time, accountability and fairness matter even more. Automated decisions must be explainable and open to challenge.
And there must always be a clear line of accountability behind every AI-driven decision – that means a person, a process, an institution that owns it.
These are not challenges that finance or technology alone can solve. They draw on law, ethics, behavioural science, and public policy.
This will require an interdisciplinary approach. We need economists who don’t just understand incentives, but also a little more about code, technologists who don’t just understand systems, but perhaps also understand how regulations impact the way business is done. We will certainly need business leaders who understand both the data and the human consequences behind technology.
This is where we believe GIFTS has a role to play. GIFTS will deepen research at the intersection of AI, business, finance, and society, and bridge collaboration between academia, industry, and the government.
By building deep expertise across these dimensions, GIFTS can help Singapore work through these issues rigorously, develop credible positions, and strengthen our thought leadership as we pursue our National AI Mission in financial services.
I am heartened to hear Professor Lin William Cong describe NTU’s ambition for GIFTS as not simply to study technological change after it happens but to shape the intellectual and institutional foundations needed to understand technology as it is woven into the fabric of our lives.
Through GIFTS, NTU is equipping the next generation with the skills to navigate future technology transitions.
I look forward to working with you to strengthen Singapore’s thought leadership and build better capabilities for the future.
Thank you.