The first Philippine FinTech festival highlights the need for cross-border collaboration

With ASEAN’s digital economy poised to reach $1 trillion by 2030, Digital Pilipinas showcases the Philippines as a “soft haven” for global innovators. During the last Digital Pilipinas Festival (DPS), foreign and Filipino leaders shared their plans for mutual progress by making innovations such as Web 3.0, insurtech AI and Big Data, among others, more accessible to the general public.

Digital Pilipinas is the largest private sector movement to create a technology and innovation ecosystem aimed at bringing about technological acceleration in the country and building an anti-fragile system in its societal structures and industries.

It convened the Digital Pilipinas Festival, which was composed of World FinTech Festival-Philippines and Philippine FinTech Festival, in partnership with elephants, an organization founded by Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS) to promote dialogue between the public and private sectors to promote fintech in the digital economy.

Amor Maclang, Digital Pilipinas and World Fintech Festival-Philippines convenor, recognized the conference leaders “who share ASEAN’s vision of innovation and unity born of a desire for mutual progress”.

With Digital Pilipinas as a platform for international technology collaboration, she also positioned the Philippines as “a welcoming gateway to ASEAN for other countries looking to do business in our region, for innovators from other countries who, in the face of adverse political or economic conditions, have to temporarily move to where their culture of innovation will be preserved.”

The benefits of ASEAN technology cooperation

Manish Bhai, founder, president and CEO of UNO Digital Bank, agreed that without such a cross-border ecosystem, “we will not succeed in digitalisation. What we try to do is that everyone is a partner. It has to be cross-country, ASEAN, regional, global.”

A positive impact on trade will be the first benefit of an ASEAN technology cooperation. As described by Jimmy Kyle Siy, Brankas director of customer success: “The more seamless transactions are between ASEAN countries, the more trade between member countries is encouraged. Technology also enables a wider demographic of potential trading partners. A good example is how Singapore and Indonesia have linked their respective fast payment systems (Pay now and UPI) to enable affordable money transfers. We must work with the respective governments to ensure that we are fully compliant with the various monetary policies of each.

Supposedly CEO George Royeca said that cooperation with ASEAN means “cooperation with regulators trying to create the best products that will have the highest positive impact. We can have better prices and good insurance plans.”

Meanwhile, Noel Bonoan, operations manager and deputy manager i KPMGsaid they are also concentrating on “e-governance to deliver good services for a younger constituency and essentially make their cities more livable.”

Digital transformation for everyone

Ann CuisiaCEO and President of digiCOOP Technology Service Cooperativealso reiterated that they are building ecosystems to “deliver digital services to cooperatives and their members, making progress mostly for the grassroots.”

Wei Zhou, CEO of the most established crypto brand in the Philippines, Coins.ph, spoke about his plans to make the Philippines “a leader in Web 3.0 not only in ASEAN but globally. Digital assets and blockchain are equalizers and can mean economic empowerment. It’s a good place to start.”

In another interview, Rico Bautistapresident and CEO of Etiqa Philippines, talked about the relevance of DPF for businesses that want to move to the digital market: “We want to hear thoughts and best practices, so that we can be more conscious in developing the industry. We want to use technology to reach more of our target markets within the life and non-life sector. In an age of Web 3.0, Open Finance and soon open insurance, we need to be aware of the trends we see that can help us capture the target markets we have identified.”

April Tanhead of corporate strategy for COLFancial, explained how its online trading platform can connect ASEAN countries: “Investors can participate in the various ASEAN countries by buying stocks,” adding that access to financial resources can bring wealth growth.

Cooperation

To span ASEAN, Union Bank of the Philippines will adopt a spirit of cooperation. In accordance Erika Dizon-Go, the bank’s senior vice president, fintech business group leader, “Through partnerships with other FinTech companies, we ensure that other financial products offshore can be brought here.”

Michael Calma, the country manager in the Philippines Advance.AIfollowed this up by saying that economic progress can happen by “localizing AI and Big Data down to the masses, making consumer protection, financial services and e-customer services more accessible to them.”

Job bag Lászlómanaging director, of Digital Success Nonprofit Ltd., emphasized that digital transformation is a prerequisite for progress because “digitalization is all around us. Everyone must know IT and IT professionals must know everything. We can have all kinds of people and have all kinds of degrees to digitize the culture even in terms of policy making for the next 30 years.