Global consulting leaders gather for Singapore Fintech Festival

The Singapore Fintech Festival gets underway today, with a number of global consulting leaders due to appear over the course of the event.

Described as ‘The world’s largest and most impactful fintech festival’, the Singapore Fintech Festival is upon us for 2019, with a huge line-up of events, speakers and exhibitors. Hosted by the Monetary Authority of Singapore, and running from today until the 15th of November, attendees to the event will be able to catch panel appearances and addresses from senior leaders at some of the world’s biggest consultancies, including top-level event sponsor Deloitte.

The conference kicks off with a focus on one of this year’s four primary themes, ‘Sustainability, Finance and Tech’, with WWF International President Pavan Sukhdev to provide the opening address ahead of a series of panel sessions – including ‘2020: Digital Transformation Agenda’, moderated by Deloitte’s Global Financial Services Industry Leader Bob Contri. A three-decade veteran at the firm, Contri now oversees a practice with a headcount in excess of 65,000 people.

Joining Contri (who backs up a recent appearance at the firm’s annual Regulatory & Financial Crime conference in the Middle East) from the professional services giant are partners Olivier Jan, Deloitte’s Paris-based Global Sustainability Leader, and Michael Tang, a two-decade Deloitte veteran who heads the firm’s Global Financial Services Digital Transformation practice – and previously served as Deloitte’s Financial Services Practice Leader for the Asia Pacific region.

Elsewhere representing the Big Four; James Lloyd, Asia-Pacific FinTech & Payments Leader at EY-Parthenon, will moderate a panel on the ‘Next Generation of Insurance Leaders’, while KPMG partnership duo Anton Ruddenklau (Global Co-Head of FinTech) and Tomas Otterström (Global lead for Sustainable Finance) will also appear. Winston Nesfield, a partner at Strategy& in SEAsia, will feature on a panel concerning the impact of trade volatility on trade routes.

Meanwhile, global tech consulting and services giant Accenture has sent along a trio of managing directors to grace the stage, including Europe Data Business Group lead Andreas Braun, who is also a senior regional leader for applied AI. Braun is joined by US-based pair David Treat (co-lead of Accenture’s global blockchain business), and Christine Leong, who serves as the global leader of the firm’s Decentralized Identity & Biometrics group.

Another leader from the tech consultancy realm, Sudhir Pai, Capgemini’s Chief Technology & Innovation Officer for Global Financial Services, will feature in a panel session on exponential technologies for social advancement, while from the traditional management consulting realm, Bain & Company veteran Suvir Varma – formerly the firm’s Head of Private Equity for Asia – is due to moderate a panel on the ‘trillion-dollar opportunity’ of sustainable finance.

With up to 50,000 attendees expected at the festival in just its fourth edition, there will also be plenty of other activities beyond the panel-sessions to keep fintech enthusiasts entertained, including the Global FinTech Hackcelerator, the Fintech Awards, and from Thursday following the expo portion of the event, the ‘Innovation Lab Crawl’, which will see among others Synechron, Accenture, Deloitte, Capgemini, PwC and Ernst & Young open their test-bed doors to the public.