SFF x SWITCH, the Singapore Fintech Festival and Singapore Week of Innovation and Technology will be back on December 7-11 in a new hybrid format, the organizers said in a media briefing on Thursday. The event will also run 24 hours and broadcast from 40 global locations to “help businesses kickstart conversations and set their roadmap for 2021.”
MAS chief fintech officer Sopnendu Mohanty, as one of the hosts, said that “the global pandemic has led to a reimagination of how we can deliver SFF x SWITCH as a global platform.” Mohanty promised a “new digital experience at scale.” Together with the technology partners, the organizers re-created a virtual Singapore where participants can visit panel sessions in the Marina Bay area or network at Boat Quay.
The event will feature more than 800 speakers, including the 2019 Nobel Prize in Economics Dr. Abhijit Banerjee, former US Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson, IMF managing director Kristalina Georgieva, Banque de France governor François Villeroy de Galhau, the CEOs of Google and Microsoft, Sundar Pichai and Satya Nadella, Arianna Huffington, with some heads of state still pending to be announced.
Each of the five days of the main event will have a different theme. The Economic Summit on day one, for example, will see a panel with Standard Chartered CEO Bill Winters and DBS Group’s Piyush Gupta. EDB chairman Beh Swan Gin will join PayPal CEO Dan Schulman in the evening session.
The Infrastructure Summit on Tuesday focuses on payments and fintech. Dr. Agustin Carstens from the Bank for International Settlements will speak about digital currencies and innovation in central banking. Vodafone CEO Vinod Kumar will discuss how 5G impacts financial services. “Crypto as the new safe haven” is the topic of a chat with Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss.
Green finance, the global pension gap, and big data are part of the Impact Summit on Wednesday, that includes speakers such as Mia Mottley, the Prime Minister of Barbados, and Patrick Njoroge, governor of the Central Bank of Kenya. The Investor Summit on Thursday will feature “Behind the scenes” sessions with Temasek, KKR, and Carlyle Group, among others. The Talent Summit on Friday welcomes Blackrock chairman and CEO Larry Fink, Xiaomi co-founder Hong Feng, and Gojek’s Kevin Aluwi, among others.
SWITCH, which will run in parallel to the Fintech Festival, also offers various debates, masterclasses, networking, and the Slingshot startup competition. “We are very pleased to see that SWITCH has attracted even more global innovation partners this time, with established names such as 500 Startups, Sunway Group, and VinaCapital joining us at various thematic panel discussions,” said EDB’s Edwin Chow. The FinTech Awards, a Hackcelerator, talent pavilions, and innovation lab crawls are completing this year’s festival.