Singapore finance leaders are ahead on AI — and now hit the scaling wall, survey finds
Source: FutureCFO
Singapore's finance chiefs have moved past the pilot phase. A new study commissioned by payments company Airwallex and conducted by Forrester Consulting finds 86 per cent of Singapore finance leaders have already adopted AI in at least some finance workflows, with 96 per cent expecting investment in...
Singapore's finance chiefs have moved past the pilot phase. A new study commissioned by payments company Airwallex and conducted by Forrester Consulting finds 86 per cent of Singapore finance leaders have already adopted AI in at least some finance workflows, with 96 per cent expecting investment in AI-powered finance to rise over the next 12 months — placing the city-state among the world's most advanced markets for AI-driven finance.
The survey maps the adoption curve in detail: 28 per cent of respondents use AI for simple, singular actions; 31 per cent for multiple pre-configured actions; and 18 per cent say AI already executes autonomously with minimal human input. But the headline insight is that scaling — not adopting — is now the biggest challenge. Sixty-four per cent identify fragmented or inconsistent data across disconnected systems as a core barrier to scaling AI, and 30 per cent do not plan to expand adoption over the next year, signalling a shift from deploying more tools towards maximising the value of existing AI investments.
The infrastructure finding drives the strategy numbers: 66 per cent of Singapore finance leaders favour a hybrid approach combining in-house expertise with external providers, and the share planning to build AI entirely in-house is expected to fall from 32 per cent today to 17 per cent within a year. Talent remains a competitive lever — 27 per cent have implemented structured, enterprise-wide AI talent strategies covering role redesign, certifications and hiring, while only 10 per cent have yet to assess how AI will change workforce requirements.
The findings echo the broader pattern in Singapore's financial sector — DBS rolling out agentic AI assistants, MAS finalising AI risk guidelines covering agentic systems — where adoption has raced ahead and the messy middle has become the battleground: data quality, system integration and governance rather than the models themselves. Sixty-four per cent of leaders expect AI to handle forward-looking cash-flow forecasting and scenario modelling within the next year.
Why it matters for Singapore: The survey underscores a structural advantage that keeps compounding: finance leaders here are no longer asking whether to use AI but how to wire it into existing systems. That puts pressure on banks' modernisation roadmaps and on the local fintech ecosystem that serves them — and it suggests data infrastructure, not model capability, will decide who wins Singapore's next phase of AI adoption in financial services.
