 Your Excellencies ladies and gentlemen, it is wonderful to be back to this ever-growing Singapore FinTech Festival Over the last decade as the UN Special Advocate. I have really witnessed a rapid improvement in financial inclusion Today almost 70% of all adults have a financial account That is an increase of 1.2 billion adults in the last eight years Financial inclusion matters because of its power to improve people's lives It is not an end in itself Rather, a means to create jobs, take part in an increasingly digital economy hedge risks, improve development outcomes, empower women and enhance the financial health of customers During my last UN visit to Dhaka this July, I met Isu Hassan In 2016, Isu started to produce her own grandmother's hair oil recipe to sell to neighbors and friends It was an immediate hit However, to commercialize her home-based micro-business, she needed support With the help of a local FinTech shop-up, not only was she able to quickly access credit based on a digital footprint But shop-up also supported Isu with back office and online administration Today, Isu has a booming business employing four people and she has bought a house for her parents I am convinced that inclusive technology innovations like shop-up present today a best opportunity to tackle financial exclusion There are currently 1.7 billion adults still on banked and many more do have access But not to products that meet their needs, therefore they do not use them We have come a long way since mobile phones were first used to leapfrog brick-and-mortar back branches and we think traditional business models for serving the poor Kenya has been one of the global showcases of this Mobile money providers in the central bank drove the rapid increase in the number of banked adults from 42% in 2011 to 82% in 2017 They have succeeded in digitizing domestic remittances, broadening access to digital accounts, introducing proportionality to know your customer requirements Creating test-and-learn regulatory approaches and building inclusive agent networks This has resulted in real improvements in citizens' lives In 2016, MIT study found that access to mobile money allowed 10% of the poorest households in Kenya to pull themselves out of poverty There are today now 272 active mobile money deployments across 90 countries serving almost 900 million registered users Which is great However, usage of these services is still very low Two out of every three mobile money accounts are inactive or dormant And the active use of savings and borrowing is stagnant This basically says something about the quality of these products Now, fintech is beginning to show it can reverse its trends New competitors are emerging with startups creating more tailored, faster and cheaper products Mobile money providers and banks are striking partnerships with innovators to better serve these users Yet, one big challenge is to have regulatory tools which can keep up with a fast pace of innovations and new risks These new risks include cyber attacks, privacy breaches, dominating super platforms and discrimination that could be created by algorithms In terms of exclusion due to algorithms, an American fintech uses customers' punctuation and spelling in their credit scoring models as a proxy for quality of education Well, spelling mistakes is not necessarily an indication of someone's ability to pay their bills I don't need to tell you what this weekend actually came up about the latest news of algorithms offering less credit to women Even they actually had better scaring credit scoring And last year in India, cyber hackers infected customer banks' server with malware and retrieved customer processing information and they stole 13.5 million dollars Another big risk is that a rapid expansion of digital credit to the underserved can lead to indebtedness and further exclusion due to lower credit scores From the third of Kenyans that have recently used digital credit providers, about half of these have been late repaying their loans Subsequently, more than 400,000 borrowers have been reported to the credit reference bureau for late repayment on astounding loans of less than $2 So building these regulatory tools is especially challenging for countries who lack resources and the staff with the necessary skills to understand fintech's rapid development Based on the early experience of regulators, my fintech working group has issued a report earlier this year together with the Cambridge University with the support of MAS This report contains early lessons learned on regulatory sandboxes, innovation offices and ractech to help regulators, especially from developing and emerging markets Three key insights from the report are First, regulatory sandboxes are not always the right tool to begin with Less resource intense innovation offices may be a better starting point A recent assessment by the Kenyan Capital Market Authority revealed that an innovation office was enough to resolve regulatory questions of most startups Second, some initiatives are more suited to the initial stages of regulatory innovations while others can benefit from existing initiatives and infrastructure MAS's experience with their innovation office gave them a good foundation to create afterwards their regulatory sandbox and explore ractech solutions Third, facilitating interagency coordination and collaboration is crucial Many innovative financial services cut across several regulatory mandates Interagency coordination is often needed to make regulatory innovations effective For example, to provide innovators with a single voice, the Dutch central bank and financial market authorities jointly run an innovation office today So while improving the regulatory environment is a crucial piece of the puzzle The private sector is really key It is the private sector that will develop customer centric approaches and create products which will improve users actual financial health and not simply create access or usage Providers and investors can also create industry standards to make their practices more inclusive and safer Fintech associations can lead by providing a collective voice to regulators on policy changes to encourage innovation And large companies can also support the emergence of new solutions and startups by establishing fintech hubs, accelerators and anchoring industry sandboxes More broadly, if we want fintech to thrive, there are necessary policies and pieces of infrastructure that need to be there Some are critical for access such as connectivity, physical infrastructure and digital IDs Others make markets work better for customers such as fair competition and interoperable payment systems And some others, to protect the finance system and users such as data privacy, cybersecurity, consumer protection and digital and financial literacy To deal with all of this, we need to share knowledge among different countries We can learn from Mexico, which has established an interoperable payment system Or from Peru, with this new digital ID systems or India And organizations such as the BIS, Gates Foundation, MAS and the World Bank Group can facilitate knowledge sharing on global public goods among central banks Finally, I call on each of you to consider the large impact that you can actually have on financial inclusion You can co-create products, standards, regulatory tools and public goods so fintech can seize its potential to spur inclusion and improve people's lives Remember, still 1.7 billion people to go in terms of access But many, many more where you can actually improve their financial lives to actually make their dreams come true So they can actually become resilient and actually build for a better future I wish you a lot of success and thank you very much for all your endeavors