MAS and UK FCA Launch UK-Singapore AI-in-Finance Partnership
The Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS) and the UK's Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) have launched a strategic partnership to advance safe, responsible AI across both markets. For financial institutions and fintechs, this creates a clearer path to scale AI solutions across Singapore and the UK with aligned expectations and more predictable regulatory engagement.
What's in scope
- Joint testing of AI solutions across both jurisdictions to shorten learning cycles and reduce duplicated effort.
- Exchange of regulatory insights to bring clarity on supervisory expectations for AI use.
- Ongoing discussions on responsible AI to address model risk, bias, explainability, and operational resilience.
- Collaborative events to highlight best-in-class approaches and connect firms with regulators and peers.
- Integration with existing programs: MAS PathFin.ai and the FCA's AI Spotlight to cross-share quality solutions.
In practical terms, AI solution providers in Singapore and AI innovators in the UK can operate and scale more effectively across both markets. Financial institutions get a larger sandbox, faster feedback, and access to proven approaches that meet supervisory expectations.
Signal from the regulators
Kenneth Gay, Chief FinTech Officer at MAS, said, "AI is redefining the future of finance - moving from experiments to enterprise use, and from individual models to connected, agentic systems. As this shift accelerates, MAS' priority is to ensure that adoption is both safe and scalable." He added that the partnership builds a bridge for institutions, innovators, and regulators to collaborate on trustworthy AI, including testing environments and workforce readiness.
Jessica Rusu, Chief Data, Information and Intelligence Officer at the FCA, said, "Our partnership with the Monetary Authority of Singapore will help raise our global influence in a strategically competitive space. UK and Singapore firms will be able to grow through collaboration, gauge new cross-border opportunities, and shape the future of responsible AI innovation in finance."
What you can do now
- Map AI use cases to regulatory touchpoints (suitability, fair treatment, market integrity, financial promotions, outsourcing, model risk).
- Upgrade model risk governance for foundation and agentic systems: inventory, validation, monitoring, drift controls, and human-in-the-loop checkpoints.
- Tighten data controls: lineage, quality, PII minimization, consent, localization requirements, and cross-border transfer mechanisms.
- Strengthen third-party risk management: vendor due diligence, SLAs for transparency, incident reporting, and exit plans.
- Test in supervised environments where possible and document results you can defend to auditors and regulators.
- Build skills: prompt design, evaluation frameworks, red-teaming, and AI policy literacy across first line, risk, and audit.
- Define measurable outcomes: accuracy, fairness, latency, cost-to-serve, complaint rates, and override ratios.
- Brief the board and senior management on accountability, escalation paths, and disclosure standards.
How to engage
UK AI innovators can apply to upcoming FCA-MAS AI Spotlight activities. Singapore financial institutions and AI providers can participate via MAS PathFin.ai events. In both cases, highlight how your solutions advance safe, responsible AI across the UK and Singapore and what controls you have in place.
Compliance watchpoints
- Bias and fairness: measurable thresholds, representative data, and remediation plans.
- Explainability: fit-for-purpose explanations for customers, supervisors, and internal validators.
- Operational resilience: fail-safes, rollback plans, change control, and model versioning.
- Customer communications: accurate disclosures when AI is used in advisory, onboarding, or servicing.
- Record-keeping: prompts, outputs, decisions, and approvals retained for audit.
- IP and data rights: training data provenance and third-party content usage.
- Cross-border usage: data transfer mechanisms and localization constraints for training and inference.
- Incident response: detection, containment, notification, and post-mortems aligned with regulatory timelines.
Bottom line
This partnership lowers friction for AI adoption that meets supervisory expectations while raising the bar on safety and accountability. If you're building or buying AI, align your governance and testing with these themes now and engage early with the programs to accelerate approvals and scale.
Learn more about the regulators involved here: Monetary Authority of Singapore and Financial Conduct Authority (UK).
If you're planning capability building for your teams, this curated list may help: AI tools for finance.
AI innovators from the UK interested in FCA-MAS AI Spotlight and Singapore firms interested in PathFin.ai are encouraged to apply and show how their solutions support safe and responsible innovation across both markets.
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