RegStream

ABS Annual Lunar New Year Lunch 2025

Speech by Mr Piyush Gupta, ABS Chairman

12 February 2025 at Sands Grand Ballroom, MBS Singapore

ABS Chinese New Year Lunch Speech 2025

1. Guest of Honour, Mr Chia Der Jiun, Managing Director of the Monetary

Authority of Singapore

Heads of Associations and Bank partners

Fellow Council Members

Ladies and Gentlemen

Good afternoon and a warm welcome to everyone.

Lookback on 2024

2. As we enter the new year, allow me to share some reflections on the past

year and thoughts on the year ahead. Like the wave-like twirl of the dragon

dance, the year of the dragon saw both highs and lows, punctuated by twists

and turns.

a) Amid easing inflationary pressures, the Federal Reserve and other major

central banks cut interest rates for the first time since the pandemic, while

the MAS just last month also eased policy for the first time in years. The

general global monetary policy convergence toward greater easing belied

a divergence in growth - while the US economy expanded at a brisk clip,

other major economies such as Europe and China registered tepid

growth, hampered by ongoing structural challenges. Stock markets

enjoyed a relatively good year, with some markets roaring to record highs.

The S&P; 500 and NASDAQ both surged almost 25% in 2024, reflecting the

strength of the US economy, while Japan’s Nikkei also ended the year

almost 20% higher.

b) This exuberance was not reflected in the polls however, with voters in

countries like the US, UK, India, and Japan expressing their discontent by

either electing new parties into government or lowering their support of

incumbents. In particular, Trump’s win at the US presidential elections

reflected a global shift to the right and will shape the course of global

policy over the next few years, especially as the eagle and the dragon spar

over their ascendancy on the global stage. We can only hope that the two

parties get a-long, and that the eagle avoids tickling the dragon’s tail while

the dragon keeps an eagle eye on preventing efforts toward a detente

from going up in smoke.

c) This ‘cooperative rivalry’ is perhaps most evident in the technology sphere,

with Chinese AI model Deepseek bursting on the scene just 2 years after

the unveiling of ChatGPT by OpenAI, setting the world on fire with its

ability to perform on par with or better than industry-leading models in

the US at a fraction of the cost.

What’s next for 2025

3. Staying smart, swift, and sharp

a) Let me now glide into the year of the snake, which has been called the

“little dragon”. But while the dragon is a combination of several

animals, the snake is perhaps best characterised by its duality – across

cultures, it is both a symbol of danger and protection, deception and

wisdom, creation and destruction. In Indian mythology for instance,

Vasuki, the king of serpents, is said to symbolise both the forces of

good and evil required for cosmic balance and transformation, having

allowed both the gods and demons to use him as a rope to “churn the

ocean milk” to extract the nectar of immortality. How best can we harness the snake’s dualities? Let me suggest three ways – stay swift, stay smart, stay sharp.

4. Stay Swift – maintaining adaptability and agility

a) The caduceus is a staff with two snakes coiled around it that belongs to

the Greek god of commerce, Hermes. Today, it is used as a symbol of

trade and commerce, and is emblazoned on the crests of several

customs agencies, including the Singapore Customs and China

Customs. It was said to have been created when Hermes threw his

staff at two fighting snakes, which ended their struggle and twined

themselves around the rod. It is thus also a symbol for peace and

mediation.

b) This will be especially pertinent this year, given the tariffs imposed by

President Trump and prospects of a looming trade war, which will

impact Asia, whose growth has been largely driven by its export

engines. This could have spillover effects back to the US - if Asia and

the rest of the world slows, the US could also start slowing through the

inflationary impulse. Trump’s pronouncements could also lead to

financial market instability, which could spill over to the real economy.

If inflation remains high while markets become unstable, this would

create a dilemma for the Fed’s rate policy in terms of whether to curb

inflation by keeping rates high or calm market jitters by cutting rates.

In addition, the high levels of US debt to GDP are also beginning to

create anxiety among bond vigilantes. These macro uncertainties,

coupled with rapid technological and geopolitical developments, mean

that we are likely to see a lot of choppiness and volatility in the market

in the year ahead. While Nvidia saw a more than 200% rise in its share

price in 2024, it set the record for the largest loss on a single day in the

history of the US stock market with its 17% share price fall on the day

of DeepSeek’s new model release.

c) Under such an environment, staying swift by adopting the agility and

adaptability of the snake amid the sinuous path ahead will be key. Just

as the snake slides nimbly into crevices to avoid danger from

predators and get to new sources of prey, businesses would do well to

guard against snakes in the grass and strike with decisiveness to scale

ladders of success and not let opportunities slither away.

5. Stay Smart – seizing opportunities for transformation

a) While the year ahead will be filled with twists and turns, it will also

present opportunities to shed old ways of thinking and embark on

transformation and growth. Just as Madam White Snake in the Legend

of White Snake transforms into a human being and finds true love, so

can businesses transform the way they work and rethink their

operating models to chart new avenues of growth.

b) In that spirit, I am pleased to announce that a new entity will be set up

to consolidate the administration and governance of Singapore’s

national payment schemes. Currently, payment schemes such as Fast

And Secure Transfers (FAST), Inter-bank GIRO System, PayNow and

Singapore Quick Response Code (SGQR) are administered and

governed by different scheme administrators. Going forward, these

entities will transfer the administration and governance of their

respective payment schemes to the newly established entity after it is

incorporated later in the year. This is not simply “drawing a snake and

adding feet to it”. The streamlined administration and governance will

improve operational efficiencies of the various payment schemes

through better cross-scheme co- ordination, enhanced synergies and

quicker decision-making through a single entity. This will in turn enable

Singapore to better harness opportunities in the next growth stage of

global payments and serve as a multiplier – or what you could call a

value adder.

c) Beyond the field of payments, advancements in technology, especially

artificial intelligence, present myriad opportunities for all businesses to

stay smart by leveraging technology’s revolutionary potential to

embark on new innovations and change existing paradigms. Even

developments within the technology itself reflect this – while other

tech companies had relied on increasing compute power by adding

more and more chips, DeepSeek instead sought to improve the

efficiency of compute through groundbreaking training techniques.

This has changed the “more is better” paradigm of AI and sparked a

rethink of approaches toward model development. It has also further

facilitated AI democratisation - while most of us won’t be speaking the

snake-like Parseltongue spoken by Harry Potter, many more of us will

hopefully be able to possess a magic touch by using another

serpentine language – python – to create new opportunities, instead of

simply “eating snake”.

6. Stay Sharp – guarding against crime and fraud

a) While the biblical snake is often depicted as a deceptive trickster, the

snake in Chinese culture is a symbol of wisdom and creation, as

embodied by the Chinese goddess Nuwa, who is said to possess a

human face and a snake’s body and to have created the first humans

on earth. We would thus do well to channel the snake’s wisdom and

stay sharp by guarding against deceptive perpetrators of financial

crime and creating safe and secure environments to allow new

ecosystems to grow and thrive.

b) I am thus pleased to announce that the Trade Finance Registry (TFR)

and SGTraDex will be rolling out the Bill of Lading (BL) Genuineness

Check – an automated industry-wide solution for banks in Singapore to

validate the genuineness of Bills of Lading in real-time. The solution

builds on the Duplicate Financing Check, the first capability launched

by TFR, which is supported by 40 key trade financing banks with more

than 18,000 queries to-date. By enabling direct, real-time verification of

trade documents between banks and carriers, the BL Genuineness

Check further empowers banks to combat trade finance fraud and

enhances confidence amongst supply chain ecosystem players. It also

forms a key tenet of SGTraDex’s Trade Finance Digital to Physical

Twinning use case, which aims to digitalise the relationship between

banks, corporates and logistics players to strengthen Singapore’s

position as a global trade finance hub. Indeed, I hope this will deter the

snake oil salesmen and snake charmers in the industry and allow the

trade sector to scale greater heights.

c) Like the nagas, or half human and half snake deities in Asian

mythology who serve as protectors and guardians of treasures, we will

also continue to keep our consumers’ funds safe from fraudsters. Last year, ABS launched a series of anti-scam initiatives, including phasing out the use of One-Time Passwords for bank account logins and

implementing Singpass Face Verification to strengthen the digital token

setup process. To create greater scam awareness among consumers,

we also launched “Canny the chameleon”, our reptilian anti-scam

mascot. While tricksters may seem to proliferate like hydra, the multi-

headed snake monster with regenerative capabilities in Greek

mythology, we will continue to work together as an industry to render

fangless the slippery scammers and smooth criminals, to end-a-con-

da(nd)-deception. If you missed it, that was an anaconda. We will also

protect consumers from the poisoned chalices and forked tongues of the

vipers in the industry.

Conclusion

7. The snake represents the constant cycle of rebirth and renewal, of sloughing

off the old and growing the new. It is also swift and agile, able to adapt itself

to its environment with ease, and is a symbol of guardianship and protection.

It is thus my hope that we as an industry continue transforming and growing

– let us not be rattled by unforeseen circumstances or be-all (boa)-constricted

by existing strictures, but instead embrace the possibilities that the future

brings. I also hope that we can navigate challenges ahead with nimbleness

and agility and continue to uphold our role as stewards of our customers. Let

us stay swift, stay smart, and stay sharp.

8. On a personal note, it is also perhaps thus fitting that this marks my last

speech as Chair of ABS, before I hand over the Chairmanship to Helen. This

also heralds a culmination of a 42-year love affair with banking. I have been

engaged with the industry in Singapore since 1991, and have had the

privilege of working with several of you in this room. Thank you for the

friendship and the camaraderie. It has been a wonderful journey, and I am

deeply heartened to have seen the industry grow from strength to strength. I

wish you a successful, splendid, and spectacular year ahead. Thank you. **********