It’s not over until the fat lady sings! 

Commonly associated with Wagner's Götterdämmerung, in which the finale involves Brünnhilde (a large lady) singing, the phrase has also been widely used in baseball and football, signifying play until the very end of a game. Personally, this phrase describes what the final two months of the year is like here at GFTN.

I've just come back from Tbilisi, Georgia, where we ran our first programme in a beautiful Opera House alongside the National Bank of Georgia and The Ministry for Economy and Sustainable Development. There was a palpable energy in the regional community and great signs of a growing digital assets community. One of the personal highlights was meeting Joel Lautier of Waarde Capital, who as a grand chess master in his early years beat the great Kasparov on multiple occasions. 

We're now approaching the most important time of the year with the Singapore FinTech Festival (SFF) and the Insights Forum (IF). Celebrating the 10th Anniversary of SFF, the team is working tirelessly around the clock towards building the best and most impactful one yet. There will be a strong focus on defining the technology blueprint for the next decade of finance. At the heart of this blueprint is AI, Tokenisation and Quantum Computing. This blueprint will shape how money moves, decisions are made, systems scale and stay secure, and unlock business value across the financial ecosystem. We’ll also have Asia’s largest meetings program running in which we’ve received over 100,000 meeting requests which will culminate in over 20,000 pre-arranged meetings to drive business development, partnerships and investments.

The Insights Forum, which precedes the Festival, is the perfect place for the thinkers and builders to connect with regulators to create alignment, and for deep, substantive insights and networking. With outcome focused roundtables, multiple design thinking sessions and workshops to feast on, expect an explosion of ideas on the current and future state of financial services. We also have MUFG and Ant International running their annual programmes for their leadership teams, portfolio companies, partners and clients. And that’s just the tip of the Insights iceberg!

In addition to the 10th Anniversary of SFF, GFTN will be celebrating its first anniversary. During our first year we’ve been busy expanding our value propositions and at SFF we have a number of truly game-changing partnership announcements that will expand our Intelligence business and Capital business. These partnerships will drive our expansion into new regions and fuel our growth in 2026. If that’s not enough, we’ll also be revealing and showcasing a brand new product that will redefine the world of insight and analysis in financial services.

Words can only say so much, you have to be there to feel the energy for yourself! I look forward to seeing you in two weeks.