South Asia

Read on to find out the winners of FAAA's House Awards - Asia Pacific.

Banks and payment giants at the Singapore FinTech Festival warned about deepfakes, cyberattacks, and AI-driven fraud even as they push aggressively into agentic AI and design their firms around AI-native operating models. With risks rising, leaders said 2026 will force a balance between ambition and safeguards.

Blackstone has bought 9.9% of India’s Federal Bank and a stake in India’s Ace Insurance Brokers.

After a deluge of defaults, a new state-owned bank called United Islamic Bank is set to emerge out of the five banks, with the plan to privatise them over time.

Citi Commercial Bank in India has appointed Kannan as head of digital, technology, communication, business & professional services and industrials; he will join in December and has worked at JP Morgan for over 15 years.

The $1.3bn raise from the electronics giant and $1.75bn IPO from Tata Group's financial services arm attracted strong demand from institutional investors. Citi is seeing its largest Indian IPO pipeline on record.

Rich Chun is appointed managing director, head of Asia at Tradeweb, effective immediately; he joins from HPS Investment Partners.

On the ratings agency's 40th anniversary in the region, Singapore-based Cheong explained how transition finance and data centres are key growth areas, how the ratings agency is adopting AI, and the lessons learned from several financial crises.

The new branch in the IFSC will be led by Mihir Baxi, and will support renewable energy and infrastructure in India, including roads, transmission, data centres, technology and telecommunications.