On 21 October 2025, the Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS) published the 42 finalists for the 2025 Global FinTech Hackcelerator and the Singapore FinTech Festival (SFF) FinTech Excellence Awards. The winners will be announced at the SFF FinTech Excellence Awards Dinner on 13 November 2025, celebrating a decade of pioneering achievements in financial technology.
The Global FinTech Hackcelerator 2025, organised by MAS in collaboration with the Global Finance Technology Network (GFTN), revolves around the theme “Artificial Intelligence (AI) for Financial Services.” The competition held on 18 transformative AI solutions addressing pressing challenges in wealth management, SME financing, risk analytics, and regulatory compliance. Each finalist has been paired with industry mentors to refine their proposals ahead of the Demo Day on 12 November, where the top three teams will receive S$80,000 each and potential pilot opportunities with corporate champions such as BNP Paribas, Mastercard, and Prudential AI Lab.
The SFF FinTech Excellence Awards 2025, jointly organised by MAS, the Singapore FinTech Association (SFA) and PwC Singapore, continues its legacy of recognising excellence in FinTech innovation. This year’s awards feature five corporate categories i.e. Emerging FinTech, Financial Inclusivity, Regulatory Leader, Sustainable Innovator, and Thematic (AI)—and one individual award for the FinTech Mentor of the Year. Over 150 submissions were received, reflecting the ecosystem’s extraordinary creativity and commitment to responsible innovation.
“We are pleased to announce all the finalists selected today. Your groundbreaking AI solutions demonstrate the transformative potential of technology in financial services, and reinforce our commitment to building a more efficient and accessible financial ecosystem,” said Kenneth Gay, Chief FinTech Officer at MAS.
Holly Fang, President of SFA, added, “These exceptional innovators reflect Singapore’s thriving FinTech talent pool and exemplify the forward-thinking spirit that drives our ecosystem. We are encouraged by the growing momentum behind the ‘FinTech Gives Back’ initiative, which highlights the community’s dedication to nurturing the next generation of FinTech talent.”
Wong Wanyi, FinTech Leader at PwC Singapore, remarked, “Celebrating a decade of innovation and excellence, PwC Singapore is proud to honour the pioneers who are reshaping the financial landscape and transforming challenges into opportunities.”
At the heart of both the Hackcelerator and the experimentation and regulation move hand in hand. The AI focus embodies MAS’s strategy under initiatives like Veritas and Project Guardian, which are designed to operationalise principles of fairness, ethics, and accountability in AI-driven financial services.
ActuaViz from Taiwan converts complex regulatory data into structured, machine-readable formats for transparency. Akro, a Singapore-based firm, builds secure AI research platforms for financial institutions. India’s Boost.Money integrates AI into credit decisioning to streamline SME lending. U-Reg, another Singapore finalist, automates compliance workflows and accelerates Source of Wealth verification, reducing manual review time by up to 80 per cent. Each solution demonstrates how regulatory trust can coexist with rapid innovation.
In the Regulatory Leader and Thematic (AI) categories, solutions such as LexisNexis IDVerse’s AI-driven identity verification and Cynopsis Solutions’ global KYC platform underline the growing importance of digital governance. Meanwhile, platforms like WeavInsight’s climate-risk AI analytics show how technology can be used to meet environmental, social and governance (ESG) mandates with precision and accountability.
As the FinTech community looks ahead to the Singapore FinTech Festival in November, the finalists represent more than innovation; they embody a future in which technology serves regulation, and regulation empowers innovation.
