QuontX@Singapore Fintech Festival

By Mike Vanderroost & Pieter De Clerck - QuontX

This year, the Singapore Fintech Festival marked its 10th edition, celebrating a decade of collaborative innovation in finance. With QuontX, a financial deeptech company based in Ghent, Belgium, we had the opportunity to experience this global highlight of the year within fintech, with the appreciated support of Flanders Investment & Trade. The technology QuontX develops for advanced financial risk analysis, is inherently international. By attending SFF, we wanted to gain a better and more comprehensive understanding of what's happening in the sector. The least we can say is that even a week after the event, we're still processing all the impressions we gained. We're happy to share our key observations below.

A first observation, and no longer a surprise, is the ubiquity of AI in virtually every fintech application, from advanced data processing and fraud detection to process automation. The financial sector is undoubtedly an international pioneer in how this technology can deliver added value at scale, with real products and services, beyond research projects and proof of concepts. As a deeptech company in the AI ​​domain, we have a small reservation about whether the heavily hyped applications of generative AI and agentic AI will truly be able to deliver on this promise. After all, it's still a very nascent technology with still significant progress, and deeply embedding such emerging technologies in services and products seems risky to us, especially within finance.

A second observation is the strong rise in the application of quantum computing principles within finance. For decades, this technology was considered the next revolution in computing, but in practice, it remained stuck in an experimental phase, with few concrete applications and numerous challenges. This seems to be gradually changing, with an ecosystem active in both startups and large financial institutions. One of these caught our eye: QAI Ventures, a Swiss venture capital and accelerator dedicated to advancing global quantum technology innovation across a wide range of sectors. It's remarkable that a VC is investing so heavily in one specific technology, and by creating an international ecosystem, we believe they are promoting innovation in quantum computing. We expect quantum computing to gain significant importance in the coming years, and we say this primarily based on our own experience with the technology we are developing. Traditional computer processing technology is gradually becoming inadequate for performing complex calculations, especially in domains such as risk modeling and large-scale simulations.

A third observation is how the creativity and energy of young entrepreneurs in fintech rubs off on established large institutions. Startups are an essential part of the fintech ecosystem and perhaps the greatest driving force behind innovation in finance. The SFF offers a global platform for these startups, giving them the opportunity to connect with the big players, forge partnerships, and attract the attention of investors via the Investor Hours side event. With QuontX, we were able to experience this firsthand. We had the opportunity to engage in dialogue with other entrepreneurs, financial experts, investors and even students and researchers. These discussions more than met our expectations and gave us a wealth of insights into the sector, as well as the potential of our own technology and how best to position and market it on a global scale.

A fourth and final observation is that the financial sector is becoming increasingly aware of the potential risks of less obvious external factors, which was also reflected in the topics addressed by the prominent speakers. They discussed in detail the relationships between the financial sector and geopolitics, international policy, decentralization, world trade, technological evolutions and global cooperation. This reaffirms that financial risks must be analyzed within the broader context of society on a global scale, and that existing processes must be critically examined based on their ability to detect and quantify change in a timely and accurate manner, enabling faster and more informed decisions to mitigate financial risks. The financial sector must evolve from a reactive approach to risk to a proactive one, with new processes and systems that can support this.

Our stay in Singapore and our participation in the Singapore Fintech Festival can be considered a milestone in the early days of our company. We are even convinced that every fintech startup with international ambitions should quickly gain experience in other parts of the world, and Asia in particular. This is the region where the adoption of new technology is most rapid. A visit to the world's financial hubs not only helps broaden your horizons but also provides a better understanding of the global market and customer needs and desires, and helps you spot new opportunities or identify other applications for your existing products and services. It's an investment that can be highly profitable in the long run. You don't build a technology company just from behind your computer, but also by physically experiencing and exploring the market, and by talking to professionals in the sector.