The ASEAN Financial Innovation Network (AFIN) has announced that global information service provider Experian has joined its Strategic Advisory Council.
Experian now joins six other organisations on the Strategic Advisory Council (AMTD Foundation, Mastercard, BNY Mellon, Amazon Web Services, Singapore Fintech Association and Brankas) with its specific role seeing it provide support to the overall development of AFIN and its flagship product – API Exchange (APIX).
Manish Diwaan, managing director of AFIN, stated: “We are thrilled to have Experian join APIX on the Strategic Advisory Council and look forward to working with them closely.
“Experian’s capabilities to enhance digital transformation and their experience in the ecosystem will be a big advantage for APIX and all its members.”
APIX is a global cloud-based platform that provides a curated global marketplace for financial institutions and fintechs to discover one another.
The platform allows for both collaborative design experiments in the sandbox as well as the deployment of alternative solutions.
As part of its broader strategy, Experian is looking to accelerate financial access, invest in digital transformation and provide better credit access to a wider group of clients in the ASEAN region. Its partnership with AFIN and, in turn, its inclusion within the council aims to accelerate financial ecosystem’s in the Asian Pacific region to become API-ready.
Ben Elliott, CEO Asia-Pacific of Experian, added: “It is a great honour for Experian to be a part of the AFIN Strategic Advisory Council. This provides us a platform to actively collaborate with other members of the council to shape the overall financial innovation ecosystem and accelerate our vision of driving greater financial inclusion across the region.
“This also represents a validation of Experian’s strategic regional investments in the recent past and our ongoing R&D efforts with our Singapore-based APAC innovation facility – Experian X Labs, reaffirming our commitment to be an agent of responsible change in APAC.”
The move that sees Experian join the Strategic Advisory Council follows on from the recently struck deal that saw Mastercard become a AFIN founding member.
At the time of joining, Rama Sridhar, Executive Vice President, Digital & Emerging Partnerships and New Payment Flows, Asia Pacific, Mastercard, commented: “In a world of rapid digital transformation, collaborations between emerging and established Fintech players, such as those supported by AFIN’s platform, are crucial to the development of innovative digital financial products and services.
“Having worked with tech start-ups around the globe, Mastercard looks forward to extending its support to ASEAN’s community of builders and change agents by providing access to its technology solutions, expertise and strategic partnerships to enable start-ups to rapidly and effectively scale up.”
AFIN is now in the process of selecting additional strategic partners to join the Council with further announcements expected to be made within the next few months.
Elliott concluded: “The financial services industry is at a pivotal stage with traditional financial institutions’ erstwhile linear value chain transforming into different unbundled value creation ecosystems with the advent of open banking. We are excited about the opportunity to play a leading role in the transformation of the financial sector, helping organisations to embrace the next wave of financial market development and customer-centric value creation.”
