The inaugural edition of the World API Summit virtually convened ASEAN’s top API leaders and brought together 250+ IT decision makers, thought leaders, and API enthusiasts to unlock new revenue streams and drive business growth with APIs in the ASEAN region.
Friday, 24 June 2022: The ASEAN edition of World API Summit which concluded on 22 June 2022 saw attendance of over 250 participants and 30+ speakers tuning in from across the globe to accelerate the growth of API economy in the region. The conference virtually brought together the region’s key players in the API ecosystem, including top API experts, leading API solution providers, and senior executives from notable organisations and government agencies.
The event covered themes such as; APIs: a catalyst to improve infrastructure and service delivery, Digital Financial Services Transformation, Building the next generation of Banking & Financial services through APIs, Reinventing the Financial Services Value Chain – working with partners and providers to build unique and trusted end-to-end propositions and much more. The event also provided an avenue for knowledge sharing, networking and sharing of best practices among API industry players.
Some of the top speakers who attended the event included:
● Triyono Gani – Executive Director Digital Finance Innovation Group Otoritas Jasa Keuangan, Indonesia Financial Services Authority
● Mark Gamble – Director Product & Solutions Marketing, Couchbase, United States
● Dang Nguyen – Head of Solution Consulting, Asia Boomi, Singapore
● Andri Agustinus – Director, Product and Solution Architecture for APAC, OutSystems, Singapore
● Amnah Ajmal – Executive Vice President, Market Development, EEMEA, Mastercard, New York, United States
● Nish Dharmaratne – Managing Director, Head of GTS Product | Global Transaction Services, Westpac Institutional Bank, Sydney, New South Wales, Australia
● Arvid Swartsenburg – Senior Director and head of Digital Strategy & Partnerships for TMRW Digital Group, UOB, Singapore
● Edmund Situmorang – CTO, Prodigi (Sinarmas Group), Indonesia
● Vasanth Kumar Rajarathinam – SVP, Development Lead, Enterprise Risk, DBS, Singapore
● Sandip Dhummad – Director, Technology Architecture at S&P Global Ratings, Edison, United States
● Ikram Khaliq – Head of Digital Bank, Al Rajhi Bank Malaysia, Malaysia to name a few.
Key highlights and takeaways from World API Summit include:
Triyono Gani; Executive Director Digital Finance Innovation Group Otoritas Jasa Keuangan, Indonesia Financial Services Authority, delivered the opening keynote on Digital Financial Services Transformation. Data sharing and secrecy is the most important aspect. API will be the breakthrough in our Financial economy. Connectivity is the key. How to mitigate risk and keep user experience at its vest. Delivering services on their mobile devices is the future of digital finance, Triyono stated that, “The key to success is to integrate with the banking industry’s unique capabilities in risk management, customer identification and authentication, and transaction settlement.”
Dang Nguyen; Head of Solution Consulting, Asia Boomi, Singapore, shared insights from his tech talk session on Building Connected Business with an Enterprise-Wide API Strategy. While speaking about Cloud4C’s proprietary cloud framework, their services and how they improve the overall cloud service to clients and end-users, Ravi stated that, “We were recognized by Microsoft for Partner of the Year in Qatar (2020) and recently we got the MEA Finance Award for the Most Innovative Cloud Service Provider 2021.”
The show also featured a panel discussion on the topic ‘Building the next generation of Banking & Financial services through APIs’ The speakers on the panel included Srinivasan Shanmuganathan ( SHAN ) Executive Director – Enterprise API Ecosystem & Open Banking, Standard Chartered Bank; Arvid Swartsenburg, Head of Partnerships & Strategy, UOB TMRW; Mark Gamble Director Product & Solutions Marketing, Couchbase; Ikram Khaliq, Head of Digital Bank, Al Rajhi Bank Malaysia; Vasanth Kumar, SVP, Development Lead, Enterprise Risk, DBS Moderated by (Eric) Say Wei Neo Founder, Chairman & Board Director, Neo & Partners Global (“NPG”).
They discussed key topics such as Growing Collaboration: Enhancing Financial Services through APIs Elevating Fintech Growth through Open Banking & Bank APIs Fintech empowering Digital Transformation in Financial Services and much more.
In an interesting panel discussion on the topic ‘Building the next generation of Banking & Financial services through APIs’, moderated by (Eric) Say Wei Neo, the panellists discussed Embracing opportunities is looking at capabilities of potential partners and co-develop collaborations. Build API and make money out of it. Think about open finance, always have a plan for having open data as well. API is not only an integration medium but also a business model. Digital transformation is the key to success for business organizations. Collaboration is a key to success and including all market players to help define how API future will look like.
Mark Gamble; Director Product & Solutions Marketing, Couchbase, United States shared insights from his tech talk session on ‘Accelerating App Modernization with a Modern Database: Solve Today’s Challenges and Create Tomorrow’s Innovations’. Mark stated, “Developers need modern databases with the features, capabilities and functionality that enterprise app modernization requires, modern databases can deliver the scalability and reliability needed to accelerate app modernization that can cope with today’s app workloads and support evolving applications in the future”.
“The Summit was a celebration of the next generation of APIs, created to speed digital transformation efforts in ASEAN. APIs are tearing down old barriers and fueling a new wave of tech innovation. APIs make possible frictionless interactions between people, things and data, and the Summit showcased this in action,” stated Mithun Shetty, CEO, Trescon.
The show was hosted on the virtual events platform Vmeets which helped the participants to network and conduct business in an interactive and immersive virtual environment. Participants were also able to engage with speakers in Q&A sessions and network with solution providers in virtual exhibition booths, private consultation rooms and private networking rooms.