MAS COMMITS ADDITIONAL S$100 MLN TO SUPPORT QUANTUM, AI CAPABILITIES IN SINGAPORE

SINGAPORE, July 18 (Bernama) -- The Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS) will commit additional S$100 million (SG$1=RM3.48) to support financial institutions in building capabilities in quantum and artificial intelligence (AI) technologies.

The funding, under the Financial Sector Technology and Innovation Grant Scheme (FSTI 3.0), also aims to enable the advancement of quantum and AI-related innovation and adoption in financial services.

“Quantum technology is a rapidly advancing field that holds significant potential to transform the financial industry and broader economy.

“MAS will establish a Quantum track under FSTI 3.0 to support financial institutions’ interests to build quantum capabilities in Singapore,” it said in a statement, Thursday.

The Quantum track will comprise of grants in the area of technology centres, technology innovation, and security.

For security grant, funding support of up to 30 per cent will be provided to enable experimentation and development of quantum technology-related pilots that explore the use of Post-quantum Cryptography (PQC) and Quantum Key Distribution (QKD) to safeguard firms’ critical data.

PQC is the design and implementation of protocols that are believed to be secure against the added computational capabilities of quantum computers while QKD is a secure communication method for exchanging encryption keys only known between shared parties.

MAS will also work with Institutes of Higher Learning and the Institute of Banking and Finance on talent development initiatives to support the development of quantum capabilities in the financial services sector.

In addition, it will also enhance the existing AI and data grant scheme under FSTI 3.0 which will bolster financial institutions' development and deployment of AI technologies in Singapore as well as develop AI platforms to address industry-wide use cases.

MAS said more details on the enhanced support for AI will be announced in the coming months.

FSTI 3.0, introduced in June 2015 to support the creation of a vibrant ecosystem for innovation in the financial sector, currently consists of six tracks – Centre of Excellence (COE), Industry-Wide Projects, Innovation Acceleration, AIDA, RegTech and ESG FinTech. S$150 million was committed under FSTI 3.0.

-- BERNAMA