Innovation springs in the emerging world

Sustainability and climate change took centre stage at SFF x Switch in Singapore in late 2019, when the Singapore FinTech Festival and the Singapore Week of Innovation and Technology joined forces for the first time. As one of the partners of the event that attracted more than 900 exhibitors and 60,000 participants, Oxford Business Group witnessed first-hand how the technology and financial sectors are emerging as enablers and change agents for sustainability.

In this episode of the OBG Talk podcast recorded at SFF x Switch, regional editor for Asia Patrick Cooke chats with Edwin Chow, Assistant CEO, Innovation & Enterprise, Enterprise Singapore, and Robert Opp, Chief Digital Officer at the UN Development Programme, about the prospects for open innovation initiatives to prosper against a backdrop of rising protectionism and a damaging trade dispute between the world’s two major economies. To wrap things up, Justo Ortiz, chairman of Union Bank of the Philippines, expands on the tangible impact his bank’s new fintech innovations could have on the lives of ordinary Filipinos, in a country where more than three quarters of the adult population is unbanked and broadband and 4G penetration lags behind many other ASEAN countries.