Singapore FinTech Festival Panel to Examine Controls for AI Agents

Regulators and payments executives will examine how financial firms can oversee and stop AI agents making financial decisions at the Singapore FinTech Festival on Nov. 19, as Singapore develops safeguards for automated finance.

The panel is scheduled for 12–12:30 a.m. ET (05:00–05:30 UTC) at Singapore EXPO’s Policy Stage in Hall 3. The festival runs Nov. 18–20.

Alan Lim, director and head of the Financial Infrastructure & Artificial Intelligence Office at Singapore’s financial regulator, the Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS), will join Colin Payne, head of innovation at the United Kingdom’s Financial Conduct Authority, and Casey Klyszeiko, an executive vice president at American Express. Richard Tong of Total Neural Enterprises is also on the panel. Irene Liu of Accenture will moderate.

The discussion will address accountability when an AI agent acts and how institutions can contain a failing system. The panel agenda does not list crypto, stablecoins or digital assets as topics.

MAS, financial institutions and fintech firms published a white paper in July proposing the Safeguards for Agentic Finance at Runtime (SAFR) framework. Its proposed checkpoints test whether an agent’s intended action falls within its mandate and record the decision before execution. The framework also calls for human oversight and covers uses including payments and treasury operations.

SAFR version 1.1, published in October, drew contributions from a wider group of financial institutions and AI developers. By Oct. 9, MAS had released an open-source reference implementation for industry experimentation.

The work has a connection to digital money beyond the panel’s stated agenda. MAS Managing Director Chia Der Jiun said Oct. 9 that “Agents intersecting with tokenised assets and digital money will have significant implications.” He also said regulated stablecoins may see wider use in crypto exchanges and fintech payments.

MAS issued broader AI risk-management guidelines for financial institutions on Oct. 7. They cover all forms of AI, with Sections 3 and 4 taking effect Oct. 7, 2027, and Sections 5 and 6 due for implementation by Oct. 7, 2028. MAS plans to consult the financial sector in 2027 on whether additional guidance for AI agents is needed.