What does it take to become a leading fintech hub? Having lived in London for decades and had the good fortune to join the city’s ecosystem in its early years as a founding team member of Innovate Finance – the world’s first truly successful trade body for the industry – I can recite the key ingredients by heart: favourable regulation, access to talent, access to investment, and favourable time zones.

I have heard the saying ‘London is Silicon Valley, Wall Street, and Washington all wrapped into one’ many times, and I like it a lot. It perfectly reflects my own lived experience supporting the countless companies I have worked with over the years. In London, you can literally meet amazingly talented tech people speaking with the world’s biggest financial institutions at a regulatory sandbox hosted by the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA). All in a single day.

And let’s not forget the press – all the world’s top media outlets are in London. The city offers access to the best writers, who seamlessly sell these stories to a population that adopts new fintech at a speed many other nations can’t match. No wonder this great megacity is home to more fintech unicorns than any other nation on earth, bar the US and China – the world’s two biggest economies.

Fourteen years since the launch of Innovate Finance and its support for many of the most successful fintechs in the world – from Revolut and Wise to Klarna and Monzo – there is a lot that the UK can be proud of. But what is intriguing me more these days is what’s happening on the other side of the world.

Shifting focus to the East

Folks, I have been blown away by what I am seeing in Singapore, and I’ve been trying to figure out its secret sauce. The country’s fintech sector has raised over $12.5billion over the last five years. It is home to more than 1,600 registered fintech firms, accounting for nearly 60 per cent of ASEAN’s fintech funding and more than half of the region’s deals. How can a place that is literally smaller in both population and landmass than London become such an epicentre for financial innovation?

Beyond Silicon Valley – homegrown success

To answer this question, you only have to look at the scaling journey of entrepreneurs like Rahul Shinghal, CEO and co-founder of Tazapay for some clues. His Singaporean home grown B2B cross border payment company was established just six years ago and was recently acquired by Circle in a deal that some media reports have valued at $400million.

During a panel hosted at INSEAD’s Singaporean campus, he told an audience of students that Singapore is a great place to scale up a fintech company as long as you have a market fit for your business. Forget the UK or San Francisco. Everything else you need to grow is accessible from here.

Singapore’s secret sauce is no big secret

He’s right. Like London, Singapore has got the favourable regulator, the talent and the investment pool – not to mention its proximity to the biggest populations in the world to convert as fintech users. All the international press also have correspondents based here – and are ready to share the biggest advancements coming out of this city-state.

But another major draw which is a true game changer is its tax regime. With a corporate tax rate of 17 per cent no dividend or capital gains taxes and a personal income tax capped at 24 per cent, Singapore is miles ahead of the UK when it comes to a business friendly environment and undoubtedly why so many companies have set up here and are thriving.

The proof of this approach is in its results: the list of Singaporean headquartered companies taking both local as well as global market share by storm are impressive in their calibre and quality.

Best of breed: fintech giants taking the world by storm

Take Airwallex, the global platform that helps businesses manage cross-border payments and multi-currency accounts. At this year’s Formula 1 in Singapore, you could see their logo everywhere as it became the McLaren Mastercard Formula 1 Team’s first official AI finance partner. The company has been valued at US$11billion following a US$320million Series H funding round in June this year.

Another big one is Grab – South East Asia’s multibillion dollar ‘everyday, everything’ super app. Most visitors of Singapore will refer to it as an uber equivalent, but it is so much more than that. So far, I have used the app to hail a cab, buy travel insurance, rent a bike, apply for a credit card, book a restaurant table, and pay the bill. I even used it to open an account with GXS, a brilliant local digital bank. Thanks to Singpass –Singapore’s life-changing digital identity infrastructure stored on my mobile phone — the onboarding and KYC process was completely seamless.

The list of fintech superstars goes on and includes Nium, a unicorn which builds cross-border payment infrastructure for businesses, and Coda Payments, a global leader in digital content monetisation and distribution, which made headlines in Europe last year when it bought prepaid payments platform Recharge, in what was hailed as largest fintech acquisition in Dutch history. There’s also companies like ShopBack – the free cashback and rewards platform and Advance Intelligence Group, which are leading the charge in the BNPL and enterprise software solution space.

Built on efficiency and frictionless innovation

Lee Kuan Yew, the founding Prime Minister of Singapore attributed its success to the rejection of “economic populism” and that “foreign investments are necessary; we must make Singapore attractive to investors”.

The country has succeeded in its mission, and like the catch phrase for my local GXS bank, its continual backing of innovation “breaks boundaries, not sweat!”

But for me, what makes this place really tick is how efficient it is – everything works brilliantly – and frictionlessly. And may I add – the MRT tube station is phenomenal and so well priced at less than £2 for a return ticket. Of course, like many great cities, Singapore is expensive, but you feel that your tax dollars are being put to good use.

While London remains a thriving fintech hub and will always feel like home, I can’t help but be blown away by the tenacity and scale of this nation’s ecosystem. I am looking forward to meeting more founders and hearing from many of the ecosystem’s biggest stars at this year’s Singapore Fintech Festival and finding out where the next wave of innovation will take us.

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