Regulators should heighten fintech oversight: DBS CEO

Ant Financial is an example of firms that need more oversight, Piyush Gupta says.

Bloomberg reports that DBS CEO Piyush Gupta said regulators need to increase scrutiny of non-bank firms moving into the financial business. “You do need to think about financial-system stability, and you do need to think about the consequences of unregulated players in what has been for good reasons a regulated industry,” Gupta said in a Bloomberg forum in Singapore.

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Gupta has long been vocal on the need for banks to meet the challenge posed by insurgent fintech companies which are expanding into his firm’s turf in Southeast Asia and India.

“War is one way of describing it, I guess,” Gupta said of the digital revolution. "Yet banks won’t disappear, he said, citing their industry knowledge, existing infrastructure and risk management capabilities. “Incumbents like ourselves don’t come to this battle unarmed.”

Gupta said Ant Financial is one of the companies that are in need of more oversight. Part of billionaire Jack Ma’s technology and e-commerce empire, the operator of Alipay raises and lends money like a bank and so should be regulated like one, he added.

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