Alexandre Kech is the new CEO of the Global Legal Entity Identifier Foundation (GLEIF) effective June 26, 2024.
Prior to joining GLEIF, Alexandre Kech was Head Digital Securities at the SIX Digital Exchange. As a member of the Executive Board, Alex had full executive responsibility for the Digital Securities business vertical, including relationship management, product and blockchain-based service development, and ecosystem expansion.
Over the past 25 years, Alex has constructed a unique career combining finance at BNY Mellon, payments/securities infrastructure and standards at SWIFT, and blockchain and digital assets at Onchain Custodian (ONC) and most recently Citi Ventures. As co-founder and CEO of ONC, Alex led the Singapore and Shanghai-based team that built from scratch a custody and prime brokerage service for crypto and other digital assets. As Blockchain & Digital Asset director at Citi Ventures, he built a team to engage the European ecosystem on emerging use cases for blockchain technologies and digital assets.
Alex is also involved in industry and standardization initiatives. As the convenor of the ISO TC 68 / SC8 / WG3 which produced the ISO 24165 Digital Token Identifier (DTI), he is a member of the DTI Foundation Product Advisory Committee. He also recently served as co-chair of the Global Digital Finance (gdf.io) custody working group.
Workshop Room 2 (Level 3)
Decoding Digital Assets and Payments
The curation of content and speakers was wholly managed by AMINA Bank and does not reflect the views of the organisers or its staff.
Digital assets are poised to reshape the financial landscape. Blockchain technology, with its potential for smart contracts, instantaneous settlements, decentralised financial (DeFi) services, and cross-border payments, offers a new level of automation and efficiency.
But the blockchain revolution is not without its challenges. Its cross-border nature means that virtually everyone has access to everything, everywhere. This raises crucial questions: which regulation applies? How can we protect consumers? How do we prevent Anti-Money Laundering (AML) and Combating the Financing of Terrorism (CFT)? How can we ensure privacy while adhering to Know Your Client (KYC) regulations?
The institutionalisation of the emerging digital asset sector is crucial to allowing a larger audience to access it and offering better protection to users. In this workshop, discover the challenges and opportunities the institutionalisation of the digital asset sector offers, who the new players are, and their roles and goals in the ecosystem.
Workshop Room 3 (Level 3)
Elevating ESG
This workshop is jointly hosted by Ethereum Climate Fund, Global Blockchain Business Council, and Consensys.
Climate change presents one of the most significant challenges of our time, with potential global damages reaching $23 trillion annually by 2050. Proactive climate action is not only cost-effective—with an estimated $4 trillion needed annually to achieve net-zero emissions by 2050—but also essential to prevent far greater economic and societal costs.
For effective climate action, the participation of the finance industry is vital. Financial institutions play a key role in driving the transition to a more sustainable future through strategic investments in decarbonisation and innovation. Climate Tech firms and infrastructure, as well as the transformation of existing firms and infrastructure, will both require partnership with FIs to create tangible impact. Governments and regulators, through supportive policies, can create the environment which fosters these advancements.
In this workshop, discover the innovative approaches organisations are adopting to create powerful opportunities for collaboration and information networking globally.
Roundtable Room 2 (Level 2)
Decoding Digital Assets and Payments
This roundtable furthers Elevandi’s focus on developing the digital public goods, including at the 2023 Singapore FinTech Festival and 2024 Japan FinTech Festival.
Operating under the theme of Decoding Digital Assets and Payments, this roundtable will inform policy and business leaders on how data ecosystem development and cross border data policies may impact emerging digitalization agendas within trade, finance and sustainability. Alongside the G7 agenda for Data Free-Flow with Trust (DFFT), these areas of economic activity and policy require enhanced mechanisms for trusted and reliable data sharing or analysis across jurisdictional and policy borders.
It aims to enhance awareness and dialogue between different international initiatives shaping policy governing cross-border data flows. There are several key initiatives in this area, each emanating from a different policy domain.
- The DFFT initiative set out by the G7 and G20 aims to promote cross border data flows while respecting privacy, security, and intellectual property rights;
- the CPMI agenda aims to provide support to enhance efficiency, transparency, and safety of cross border payments with interoperability as a key building block; and
- the ICC Digital Standards Initiative convenes trade and finance stakeholders to enable trade digitalization with interoperability and data sharing as primary objectives, and where success relies on the free flow of commercial data in cross border supply chains.
Other initiatives include bilateral digital trade agreements that seek to enhance access to data and systems such as credit bureaus or business registry and legal data normally reserved for domestic institutions or industry members. In this patchwork of critical initiatives, this roundtable provides an opportunity for mutual update and dialogue across to forge more effective, integrated approaches to data governance and flows in support of the global digital economy.
Attendees will be invited to participate in polls and Q&A.
Attendees who wish to familiarise themselves with the topic may refer to the reference materials below.
- Foundations for Cross Border Data Flows to support Digital Finance Trade and Sustainability - From Idea to Implementation
- Shaping data policies through cross-border collaboration
- Digital economy: Data-driven financial services with trade | SFF 2023
Roundtable Room 1 (Level 2)
Elevating ESG
This roundtable furthers Elevandi’s focus on overcoming the limiting factors preventing scaling of practices serving the Sustainable Development Goals. The 2023 Point Zero Forum considered the needs for interoperability, access and verification to track and finance net zero ambitions, which deepened into an examination of Project Savannah, a global initiative by UNDP, MAS, and GLEIF, at the Singapore Fintech Festival. The Japan Fintech Festival continued this in considering the value of a global common for climate data.
Operating under the theme of Elevating ESG, this roundtable brings together the right stakeholders to 1) share progress, insights and challenges; 2) specify the root cause of poor data quality hindering reporting efforts; and 3) shape a proposal for trusted, scalable market arrangements to mobilise granular, machine-issued data for ESG indicators and financial market innovations. Attaining granularity in data collection and consistency in reporting can drastically reduce the cost of assuring the integrity of disclosed ESG indicators, increasing information usability for strategic decision-making, financial products and data market while reducing the impeding reputation risk that arises from opaque reporting.
Attendees who wish to familiarise themselves with the topic may refer to the reference materials below.
- How to build trust in ESG data and disclosures
- Reference Materials for "Laying foundations for scalable markets in trusted and granular data for green reporting"