During the Financial Leaders’ Dialogue: Innovation and Sustainable Finance session on the first day of Singapore Fintech Festival (SFF), subject matter experts discussed how digital became something that consumers can benefit from, compared to 10 years ago.
Speaking about Fintech advancement, especially digital assets and tokenisation, the panel expressed that Switzerland is at the forefront of that.
“We haven’t even scratched the surface opportunity that we see in digital assets and tokenisation but there is a lot to be done in order to make it a success. We have to look into the law, regulations, definition, agreement of society, safety, security and a lot of conditions to make it successful,” Ralph Hamers, Group Chief Executive Officer of UBS Group AG said.
He also stated that open banking will create the opportunity for disintermediation and dashboarding as well for corporate customers and consumers, as well as create opportunity for many new players to come up.
Herbert J. Scheidt, Chairman of the Swiss Bankers Association then explained that the Swiss Stock Exchange has had large projects for the last two years digging into the details on how to tokenise in securities, shares, real-estate and more.
“We work very closely with the banks, we have a close link with the regulatory agencies and finance ministry, so it is a combined exercise of all players involved. This will be an advantage for swiss to move forward quickly in this field,” he stated.
He also added that “It is very important that we open ourselves as banks to the digital world. It has to go together with a regulation which regulates as well as the activities and not only the institutions. So we still live in a world where regulators look at banks and treat them as special entities.”
Daniela Stoffel, the State Secretary, International Finance of the Federal Department of Finance further said all this proves the fact that Switzerland is home to all these activities.
“As a regulator we are making the policy framework for all these activities. We are looking into the intermediation very openly. We are also looking into regulating activities instead of institutions. We profit with the relationship we have with the internationally active financial market actors, not just the banks but also insurance agencies,” she mentioned.
