Singapore FinTech Festival promises to be a treat, Hub Projects – THE BUSINESS TIMES

Mon, Nov 12, 2018 – 5:50 AM

LIKE any other industry, the Meetings, Incentives, Conventions and Exhibitions (Mice) industry is in the thick of a disruptive era fuelled by the digital economy as well as the increased sophistication of today’s customers.

Business events now require omni-channel engagement, linking themes of commerce and creativity, while integrating education and entertainment content.

This is what SingEx refers to as “festivalisation” of a business event. This hybrid of key elements enhances delegate experiences – participants get to create unique, personalised experiences for themselves and be fully plugged in.

Singapore FinTech Festival 2018 is organised by Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS) in collaboration with SingEx and in partnership with The Association of Banks in Singapore (ABS).

While MAS spearheads the overall festival content, SingEx drives the venue management, event curation and trade show development.

Together with ABS’s banking community outreach, the partners are focused on delivering a meaningful and personalised festival experience that will meet the varied needs and expectations of the participants.

Singapore FinTech Festival is today the world’s largest festival of its kind.

This year’s festival will feature two new elements this year: Asean Fintech Showcase and Artificial Intelligence in Finance Summit. There will be the familiar suite of interwoven events comprising Innovation Lab Crawls, Hackcelerator Demo Day, Investor Summit and the Fintech Awards ceremony, and the three-day Fintech Conference and Exhibition as the centrepiece. Popular segments from previous editions of the festival will be refreshed and enhanced.

The conference and exhibition will cover nine broad topics, including the future of banking, insurtech, and financial inclusion.

The Fintech Investor Summit has been enhanced to include two components.

At the Fintech Deal Day, leading research houses will provide customised reports on the participating fintech companies so that investors will have access to quality information on them.

It will also feature a new segment called Meet Asean’s Talents and Champions (Match), which aims to facilitate deal-making by showcasing next-generation Asean startups and enterprises across all sectors, and connecting them with potential investors. There will also be keynote presentations and leadership dialogues by notable investors, on a range of Asian-focused topics including financing, enterprise value creation, and exit and listing opportunities.

In planning for the festival, SingEx has again moved away from a one-size-fits-all approach to a delegate-centric experience. This is apparent in the multi-format treatment, showing how content from different domains can be delivered through different components of the Festival.

Eat, drink and be merry

A visitor can journey through more than 400 exhibitors from 35 countries and 16 country pavilions, and partake in the food and beverage experience where delegates decide what and when to eat, drink and be merry.

Helmed by SingEx’s chief culinology officer Chef Richmond Lim, the F&B offerings point to SingEx’s approach in quality delivery and delegate personalisation.

Working with a team of award-winning local culinary chefs – Chef Edmund Toh, Culinary Olympics double Gold Medallist Executive Chef Teo Yeow Siang, and up-and-coming Junior Sous Chef Aaron Wong – the dining experience is curated based on the fusion of Singapore’s local favourites and international cuisines where old classics and modern flavours meet.

Renowned homegrown creative curator Daniel Boey brings his flair to the festival’s design as SingEx’s creative architect. The spatial design in the conference and exhibition area is a multi-sensory feast.

From all-day dining, showcase and lounge areas to layouts for plenary stages and open mic presentation spaces, this year’s festival embraces the Asean theme, weaving in unique elements from the region in various aspects of the event design, from the stages and the lounges.

Open areas normally used as informal content sharing zones now become creatively designed spaces to provide conducive settings for the exchange of ideas and solutions.

In embracing global winds of change and truly understanding its customers, SingEx has illustrated through the Singapore FinTech Festival on how it prides on innovatively designing an event that invigorates both the Mice industry and delegates’ experience.

• This article was contributed by SingEx.