Across ASEAN, MSMEs are the backbone — 97% of all enterprises, 85% of employment. Yet most cannot accessthe credit they need to grow. The reason is structural: in advanced economies, public companies now hold over90% of their valuation in intangible assets — software, data, brand, intellectual property. In developing countries,it’s 60% and rising. But MSMEs still need physical collateral — property, equipment, inventory — to borrow. Asphysical assets shrink as a share of total value, MSMEs are being structurally squeezed out of the financialsystem. Without action, this only gets worse.
The pieces to solve this already exist across the region. Thailand has PromptPay. India has UPI. Singapore hasPayNow and SGTraDex. Indonesia, Cambodia, Vietnam, and the Philippines are building their own DPI stacks.What no one has built yet is the ASEAN financing layer that sits on top: a way to turn verified MSME trade data intosecuritisable receivables that institutional investors can buy.
AI governance is moving from theory to implementation — and moving fast. China has released a nationalgovernance framework for AI agents. The EU AI Act takes effect in stages through 2027. ASEAN’s opportunity is tobuild complementary, interoperable infrastructure that gives the region its own seat at the table — not as acompetitor to any single framework, but as an open architecture that connects them all.
ASEAN sits at the center of global supply chains. The AI systems that will increasingly power trade finance —automated underwriting, supply chain verification, invoice matching, risk scoring — need governance standardsthat work across borders.
As Prime Minister Wong said recently, ASEAN cohesion is essential for all to thrive. This conversation belongs inthe region — and the region needs to own it.
The Open Finance Utility (OFU) is a proposed shared infrastructure for MSME trade finance securitisation. TheOpen Finance Utility (OFU) connects the Digital Public Infrastructure (DPI) stacks that already exist across ASEANinto a securitisation pathway — turning verified trade data into investable assets — while building open governancestandards that ensure AI systems operating on those rails can work across every jurisdiction in the region.
This is a working lunch — not a lecture. Come ready to engage.
11.00 Registration and networking
11.30 Welcome — Mark Sin, President, Singapore Connect
12.00 Hands-on AI interaction — Mei Lin Fung
12.30 Practitioner perspective — Senior AI industry practitioner based in Asia
12.40 ASEAN’s role in the architecture — Mei Lin Fung
1.10 Open discussion
1:30 Close — Mark Sin
ASEAN trade finance practitioners, fintech founders, DPI architects, GovStack implementers, paymentsinfrastructure operators, data governance specialists, AI researchers, civic tech builders, and policy thinkers whounderstand that interoperable standards are how small countries and small businesses get a seat at the table.
SingaporeConnect bridges technology ecosystems across Silicon Valley, Singapore, and ASEAN — connecting communities, ideas, and opportunities across the Pacific and within the region.
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