The global financial landscape is undergoing a structural shift. At the FinTech Week Awards & Expo Singapore, Laksh Gangwani, Chief Growth Officer at ViewTrade, addressed the core forces redefining capital markets, the reality of deploying AI across financial infrastructure, and what it takes to build a scalable, future-ready business.
1. What are the biggest forces shaping the future of fintech today?
Four primary structural forces are coming together at the same time:
- Borderless, Global Access: Customers no longer think about investing within the boundaries of their home market. They want access to different global markets and asset classes, and they expect this through a single, seamless digital experience.
- The Transition to Always-On Markets: The industry is moving from fixed trading windows toward extended-hours, overnight trading, and eventually always-on models. Execution is the simple part; the true challenge lies in the back-office architecture—compliance, risk management, reconciliation, and liquidity funding built around traditional batch cycles.
- Democratization through AI: Beyond task automation, AI democratizes access to information and expertise. Internally, it takes knowledge traditionally held by experienced specialists and makes it instantly accessible across an entire organization. Externally, it enables institutions to deliver informed, contextual digital experiences at scale.
- Front-to-Back Modernization: The next phase of fintech will be defined by how institutions unify global access, flexible infrastructure, and AI-driven operating models without adding friction or operational risk.
2. How is Artificial Intelligence redefining customer experience, operational efficiency, and decision-making?
We are entering an era of cognitive abundance—where access to knowledge, analysis, and operational assistance becomes available at an unprecedented scale.
In financial institutions, AI shifts the paradigm across three dimensions:
- Customer & Internal Experience: AI democratizes information internally across teams while delivering contextual, highly responsive digital touchpoints for clients.
- Operational Efficiency: Most workflows require employees to collect information across multiple systems, interpret complex procedures, and hand off tasks manually. AI streamines this by navigating systems, assembling work, and reducing cognitive load.
- Preserving Human Judgment: Cognitive abundance does not mean outsourcing judgment. AI should analyze, prepare, and recommend, but human judgment and accountability must remain at the exact points where decisions carry financial and regulatory consequences.
3. Key Insights Shared at FinTech Week Awards & Expo Singapore
When reflecting on market challenges across Asia-Pacific and beyond, a common theme emerges: a broker or fintech’s real blocker is rarely execution price.
- The Front-Office vs. Back-Office Gap: Emerging fintechs get stuck because their sleek front-ends outgrow the back-office systems holding them up. Established institutions get stuck because legacy tech stacks were built for a different era and cannot be torn down mid-flight.
- Technology is Only One Piece: Technology represents roughly a quarter of the infrastructure puzzle. The remaining three-quarters—regulation, tax, operations, and the local ecosystem—determine whether a platform scales or breaks at ten times the volume.
- Operational Judgment Over Price Wars: Capital can fund a price war, but it cannot buy a regulatory license, operational judgment, or local market trust. That operational foundation is the true growth engine underneath the app.
4. How can organizations strike the right balance between innovation, compliance, and customer trust?
Rather than viewing trust as an input to balance against speed, trust is the foundational privilege under which financial institutions operate.
- The Silicon Valley vs. Pharma Analogy: Big Tech operates on a “move fast and break things” framework. Financial services cannot operate this way because institutions hold client assets and carry strict regulatory obligations. Financial services is closer to pharmaceutical development than consumer tech: nobody takes a drug mixed in a garage, but people use consumer apps built in one because the cost of being wrong is fundamentally different.
- Solving Front-to-Back: Innovation must begin with the customer’s actual problem and address structural issues front-to-back in partnership with regulatory authorities. Innovation executed in this sequence builds long-term trust instead of creating a trust deficit.
5. What opportunities does Singapore present for fintech companies and innovators?
Singapore stands out globally because it aligns three essential pillars simultaneously:
- Capital, Talent, and Regulatory Clarity: Most global hubs excel in one area while lagging in others. Singapore brings deep capital, experienced operators who have built at scale, and a proactive regulator.
- Collaborative Regulatory Frameworks: The Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS) treats fintech as core to national strategy. Through sandboxes, clear licensing pathways, and active partnership, it removes the regulatory friction that stalls fintechs in other jurisdictions.
- A Base for Regional Scale: Singapore’s advantage extends beyond launching a local product. It serves as an operational and regulatory launchpad to build deep infrastructure, licensing, and regional partnerships to scale across Southeast Asia.
6. What advice would you give to fintech entrepreneurs building future-ready businesses?
Instead of relying on complex business frameworks, ground every decision in a single guiding question:
“Does this call move trust with the customer forward, or does it create a trust deficit?”
Answering that question honestly provides immediate clarity on the necessary operational, regulatory, and technical steps forward.
The article was originally published on Fintech Week Awards & Expo LinkedIn Pulse. Read article here.
