At apidays Singapore on 20-21 April 2022, we dig deep into the business and technology of the digitised economy on the theme Digitising at Scale with APIs. We explore how API’s enable organisations to build partner ecosystems across fintech, retail and healthcare, rapidly assemble new products and services for customers, and streamline their operations.
We share how innovative companies are introducing new business models and technologies across South East Asia’s growth economies to bring millions of enterprises of all sizes, and their customers, into the digital economy.
Day 1 – Data, Ecosystems and Digital Capability
Day 1 starts with a keynote from Veronica Tan, Director of Singapore’s Cyber Security Agency. Veronica will highlight that while pursuing the opportunities of digitisation, we need to be grounded in the need to protect digital services. With API traffic now representing over 80% of all internet traffic, APIs are increasingly a target for hackers. This requires vigilance throughout the API lifecycle: when organisations build their partner ecosystems, when they design, build and test their APIs, and when their APIs are live. Veronica will explain the measures that the Cyber Security Agency are taking to enhance Singapore’s reputation as a safe place to do business.
Our second keynote speaker, Dr Dennis Khoo, author of “Driving Digital Transformation: Lessons from building the first ASEAN digital bank”, will explain the capabilities needed for organisations to reap the benefits of digitisation.
Data-Driven Business
Following the keynotes, we’ll learn how to build data driven businesses across health care, government and E commerce.
Healthcare Analytics expert Dr Nashya Haider will explain the opportunities but also the challenges of applying AI in healthcare. AI can be applied to analyse scanned images to spot cancers, and to a range of healthcare data sources, such as biomolecule and EEG data. It can accelerate the discovery of new drugs by reducing the need for slower, more costly physical experiments. But all data has biases: in the data itself, in the minds of the data scientists who create AI models, and in the users of the AI models. Incorrect application of AI can have dangerous consequences for people’s health. Nashya will discuss how to address these biases, and what it takes to build trust in medical AI systems.
Anjul Ray, Head of Data Partnerships for Asia Pacific at Experian, will show how drawing data from multiple sources can build a picture of customers and their needs, enabling organisations to present personalised offers and make better business decisions.
What does this have to do with APIs? To truly take advantage of these opportunities, and provide the transparency necessary to trust AI’s recommendations, requires the sharing of data with authorised professionals who have the skills and judgment to apply it to making better decisions.
We show how to architect and build the data stack, incorporating pipelines to draw data from its sources, transform it to make it usable, and deliver it to the people who need to make evidence-based decisions.
API Ecosystems
When it comes to finance, many women are critically overlooked and underbanked. Lucy is a fintech with a social purpose, to help women move from underbanked to unstoppable. Lucy’s Founder & CEO, Debbie Watkins, will show how they created financial services to empower women to manage their finances, start businesses and invest for their future. Debbie explains how Lucy composed a unique customer experience and value proposition by assembling technology building blocks such as digital wallets, communications and data through APIs. The results? Financial literacy, impact investment, integrated bottom lines, helping to transform lives, families, communities and countries.
Singapore’s Government Technology Agency (GovTech) relates their journey in building APEX (API Exchange) – a self-service API platform that acts as a centralised and secure API gateway for the government. The GovTech team will also show the Singapore Government Developer Portal (https://www.developer.tech.gov.sg/), a publicly available resource for developers in the wider community to access government data through their APIs.
Building and Connecting the Tech Stack
On our Technical Stage, local and international experts share their expertise across API Design, Event-Driven Architecture, GraphQL, API Testing and Developer Experience.
Sessions cover designing APIs developers want, creating authentication flows, API design linting, implementing automation and incident response, and even building an AI-powered API.
Building Digital Capability
Despite advances in technology, people are still an organisation’s greatest asset. The challenge is not “Humans vs Machines” but how to augment “Humans plus Machines” to amplify an organisation’s capabilities to meet customers’ evolving needs in the rapidly advancing digital economy.
Finding and building talent is the topic of our panel discussion “Building the Talent Pool in South East Asia”. Panel members from across academia, government and industry address the challenge of attracting people and guiding them through their career journey. The panel will explore initiatives in building an engineering culture, the people and technical skills required, and how organisations and individuals can foster a culture of lifelong curiosity and learning.
Day 2 – Open Finance
On day two, we focus on financial services, specifically open finance. We discuss how both financial institutions and fintechs are embracing partnerships to serve customers better and to grow. We’ll learn from experts from Singapore, Indonesia, Philippines, and Vietnam, how to succeed in building financial businesses in the fast-growing economies of Southeast Asia.
Manohar Chadalavada, Managing Director and Global Head of AI, Ecosystems and Open Banking at Standard Chartered kicks off Day 2 with a keynote on “How the Open Economy and Open Data change banking”.
Arvid Swartsenburg, Head of Partnerships & Strategy at UOB TMRW, discusses how partnerships are critical to UOB TMRW’s growth across South East Asia.
Since its launch in 2019, the APIX Platform has been joined by 1,100 FinTechs and 75+ Financial Institutions from 80+ countries. Manish Diwaan, Managing Director at the APIX platform operator, the ASEAN Financial Innovation Network (AFIN), will showcase the range of opportunities APIX provides for Fintechs and Financial Institutions to discover, conduct trials, and form partnerships to achieve growth and financial inclusion.
Connecting the Next Billion Customers
Outside Singapore, doing business in South East Asia presents tremendous opportunities but also challenges. Rapid economic growth, high rates of smartphone adoption, but large underbanked populations, and nascent infrastructure capacity complicate the picture. Todd Schweitzer, Co-founder & CEO at Brankas, discusses the innovative ways that companies are working to connect the next billion customers.
Connecting service providers and consumer platforms is both a challenge and an opportunity. Jakob Rost, Founder & CEO at Ayoconnect, explains how Open Finance API’s change the digital landscape in SEA.
UnionBank of the Philippines was early in going cloud-native and has now launched a finance marketplace to serve smaller banks as well as partners across the region. Cyrus Cruz, Country Head, Singapore & Managing Director, Insurance & Savings at UBX (UnionBank’s fintech arm) shares how they are leveraging this capability to bring access to finance to more people.
Bryan Carroll, Co-founder & CEO at TNEX, a digital-only bank in Vietnam, describes how to embed finance in customers’ lives in a country of high smartphone adoption and internet activity, but very few bank accounts.
Web3.0
More than just cryptocurrencies, Web3.0 is evolving to address challenges in verifying ownership, transactions and proof of delivery in a range of industry settings. As the use cases and architecture of Web3.0 develop, one thing is clear: APIs are at the heart of connecting to the blockchain ecosystem.
Ida Mok, Chief Legal Officer at Fluidity Money, explores future possibilities for the blockchain ecosystem. Neil Han, Founder & CEO of Redidio, explains “Why your business needs an NFT marketplace strategy”. Maxwell Hsu, Developer Advocate at Digital Asset, discusses a potential Smart Contract API standard for enterprises. And to ground Web3.0 in the here and now, Dom Braun, CEO & DOer at Lykke Business, caps off our Web3.0 track with his presentation on “Real Blockchain Use Cases in use today”.
Building the Finance Tech Stack
Our Technical Stage features sessions to show how to connect the finance tech stack.
Saksham Shubham, Head of Decentro’s South East Asia business, outlines the business models possible when taking an API-first approach towards banking.
STASH Next Gen’s Chief Technology Officer, Nikolai Herbstritt, explains the benefits of serverless and microservice architecture for APIs.
Singapore’s Government Technology Agency (GovTech) returns on Day 2 to showcase two enablers for Singapore’s Open Finance ecosystem: SGFinDex and MyInfo.
Now in its second year of operation, SGFinDex enables secure and consented access to customers’ financial information from major participating banks and government departments. The GovTech team will explain the business principles of data exchange using APIs.
MyInfo simplifies the Know Your Customer (KYC) process by enabling Singapore citizens and residents to consent to the government sharing their information with financial institutions. This has been so successful in reducing duplication of effort and manual processing that it has been integrated into the onboarding processes of major financial institutions and Fintechs alike. GovTech will show how even newly-minted Fintechs can access the platform.
The Future of Finance in South East Asia
The fast-growing economies in South East Asia are rapidly adopting technology and digitising commerce. But the region’s diverse cultures, economies, and geography create both challenges and opportunities for financial services. In “Finance with Asian Characteristics”, Kapronasia founder Zennon Kapron moderates a panel discussion with Bryan Carroll (TNEX), Cyrus Cruz (UBX), Pieter Franken (Special Advisor to APIX Platform), and Melissa Wong, Group Chief Product Officer at Bolttech. Our panel will share their unique perspectives on engaging communities, digitising commerce, adapting, and building partnerships to foster financial inclusion and growth in this rapidly changing landscape.
Apidays Singapore is your key to understanding what is driving the growth of the digitised economy across South East Asia.
Join us online to explore these and many other topics at apidays Singapore, 20 & 21 April 2022.
Many thanks to our sponsors Twilio, Auth0, Confluent, DataStax, Solace, PagerDuty, New Relic, Couchbase, Vonage, and Microsoft for making this all possible.
