SFF 2026 to spotlight the 5 forces reshaping the future of finance

In Singapore, artificial intelligence is already reshaping financial services, from detecting fraud to handling customer questions.

The next leap is agentic commerce, where AI agents find, compare and buy products on consumers’ behalf, said James Boey, chief executive officer of Global Finance & Technology Network (GFTN) China, India, Asean, Central Asia and Europe.

GFTN, a not-for-profit entity set up by the Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS) in 2024, organises the Singapore FinTech Festival (SFF) with MAS, in collaboration with The Association of Banks in Singapore.

Agentic commerce – a key topic at this year’s SFF – will transform online commerce, said Boey. He is also the co-CEO of GFTN Connections.

Five forces are converging to reshape finance. He explained how they interact in agentic commerce:

• Technology changes how customers makes choices and how merchants accepts orders;
• Capital is needed to adapt infrastructure, but firms must establish where the returns will come from;
• Talent, as skills are needed to oversee automated decisions and handle exceptions;
• Geoeconomics matters when customers, merchants and payment providers sit in different markets; and
• Policy must address consent, authority and responsibility across the chain.

That convergence forms the foundation of SFF 2026’s theme: “The Coming Rewiring of the Financial System: New Risks, New Rules, New Growth”, he said.

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The festival will take place at the Singapore Expo from Nov 18 to 20 and is projected to draw over 70,000 attendees from 142 countries.

Tech and talent

Boey said technology is moving the fastest among the five forces. Talent readiness is where he sees the greatest gap.

Quantum computing in finance is one example. Unlike today’s classical computers, which process information as either 0 or 1, quantum computers use quantum bits that can stand for both at once.

“It’s not top of every financial institution’s agenda yet, but its potential impact is significant,” he said.

These range from breaking widely used encryption protecting financial data and transactions, to unlocking applications in risk analysis and portfolio optimisation.

To keep pace, Boey said that financial institutions must invest in their people, not just tools.

Employees need training to use emerging technologies, manage risks and spot opportunities. Without that, firms may fall behind and miss potential gains.

Beyond specialist talent, business leaders, cybersecurity and technology teams must understand emerging technologies to craft strategies, assess exposure, and evaluate use cases respectively.

One effort in this space is GFTN’s Quantum Finance Industry Experimentation (Q-FINEX). It was unveiled in March 2026, in partnership with the University of Western Australia’s Quantum Information, Simulation and Algorithms research group, and Singapore defence tech company ST Engineering.

Q-FINEX enables financial institutions to test real-world use cases and compare classical, simulated, hybrid and quantum-ready approaches, GFTN’s website showed.

Grounded in experience

As these changes gather pace, financial institutions face tougher decisions: where to invest, where to partner and what to stop pursuing.

SFF 2026 aims to help answer those questions, Boey said. Industry leaders, start-up founders, policymakers and investors globally will share lessons from their own experience.

Links between talks, exhibitions and business meetings will also be made clearer, so attendees can follow an issue from discussion to solution, he said.

Those exploring AI, for example, can attend sessions on how businesses use and govern it, then meet solution providers at the exhibition.

“To me, the value of SFF is someone leaving (the event and being) better able to make a decision,” Boey said. “GFTN’s role is to bring insights and people together to help them take that next step.”

This was produced in partnership with the Monetary Authority of Singapore and the Global Finance & Technology Network.

For more stories, go to bt.sg/sff26