SBWire

Increasing compliance concerns have been a key theme across the banking and financial services sector in recent years. As pressure grows on enterprises to be more responsive, the market for global banking risk management is set to boom. Many banks have not been able to develop the internal competencies necessary to deal with the increasingly heavy burden of compliance. That's especially so given that compliance has expanded significantly in recent times to include additional risk sources, from channel and product to customer and operations. One of the biggest challenges that many organisations face is the way that risk management and compliance have become entangled with many other areas of operations and yet existing processes don't take this into account. For example, many banks have separated out risk management from customer experience programs even though the two are clearly interlinked. As a result of all these factors, there is going to be an increasing need for talent in global banking risk management and the market is set to boom.

Singapore continues to prove its position as a vital centre for fintech in the APAC region, attracting a wealth of investment and incubating some exciting enterprises. Aquariux, which is based in Singapore is one of those enterprises, a fintech start-up that has recently announced an opportunity for significant growth. The start-up revealed in April that it has raised US$2.2 million in pre-seed money from private investors, capital that the company plans to use to expand its workforce beyond the current team of 30 employees. Aquariux was established back in October 2020 and its business is focused on tech solutions in payments and trading, among other areas. It also provides a range of other services, including blockchain integration. In addition to the investment capital, the start-up also announced Kelvin Chia as its CEO. Chia brings more than a decade of building business strategy, subscription revenue, and B2B customer ecosystems that will be vital to Aquariux as the business develops.

Investing in environmental, social and governance (ESG) targeted opportunities is increasingly becoming a theme in the private equity world. Singapore's Azalea, a private equity manager based in the city-state, is one of the latest to move some of its considerable expertise in this area. It comes via the launch of the Altrium Sustainability Fund, which will be investing in ESG opportunities in order to balance both private equity returns as well as positive environmental and social outcomes. It is a fund-of-funds product, which means that it can be used by institutional and other accredited investors to create an investment portfolio that delivers on the sustainability front. Azalea is the fund sponsor and also the co-seed. Aviva and financial services company Singlife have also stepped up to help establish the new sustainability fund. Each one is contributing $50 million in order to get the fund up and running and to help it start delivering on the idea of private equity as a force for good.