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      Bryan Zhang

      Bryan Zhang

      Executive Chair, Financial Innovation for Impact; Executive Director, Cambridge Centre for Alternative Finance

      University of Cambridge

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      Bryan is a Co-Founder and the Executive Director of the Cambridge Centre for Alternative Finance (CCAF) at the University of Cambridge Judge Business School. He is also a Co-Founder and the Executive Chair of Financial Innovation for Impact (Fii) and a Co-Creator of C:\>DIR.

      He has more than a decade of experience in researching technology-enabled financial innovation and its interplay with regulation, supervision and policy nationally, regionally and globally. Bryan has led and co-authored more than 70 reports on FinTech market trends, industry dynamics, regulatory changes and innovation as well as digital financial inclusion. The CCAF and Fii has collaborated with more than 5000 fintechs, 350 central banks and financial authorities, and directly trained 4400 policymakers, regulators and supervisors from 180 jurisdictions.

      Bryan is a Non-Executive Director of the UK Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) and the Chair of its Board Risk Committee, a member of Bank of England and HMT’s CBDC Engagement Forum, IMF's FAS Advisory Group, OECD's Steering Group on SME & Entrepreneurship Finance, Central Bank of UAE's Financial Inclusion and Literacy Advisory Group, DIFC's Innovation Panel and the Bretton Woods Committee. He co-chairs the Future of Global FinTech Initiative, a collaboration between CCAF and the World Economic Forum. He was educated at the Oxford and Cambridge Universities.

      Speaking at SFF 2026

      • 2:30–3:30pmFri 20 NovCatalyst StageHall 3, Singapore EXPOOpen

        Technology Rewiring

        C:\>DIR Agentic Regulator Showcase

        Catalyst StageHall 3, Singapore EXPOOpen

        About this session

        AI agents are already executing workflows and making decisions at machine speed across financial systems and digital markets. Supervisors are being asked to oversee them with tools built for a slower world.

        The Cambridge Digital Innovation and Regulation Initiative (C:\>DIR), hosted by Financial Innovation for Impact launched the Global 'Agentic Regulator' Hackathon in September this year.

        The hackathon brought together multidisciplinary teams from the public and private sectors to work on that gap, building explainable, deployable prototypes across six priority areas:
        - Agentic Financial and High Stakes AI Advice (supported by Moneybox)
        - Agentic Payments, Commerce & their Oversight (supported by Ant International)
        - Decentralised Market Infrastructure, Smart Contracts & AI Agents (supported by the Ethereum Foundation)
        - AI-Driven Fraud and Scams
        - Know Your Agent (KY-A), Digital Verification and Digital Public Infrastructure
        - Market Manipulation, Agentic Herding & Stability

        The winning teams now bring their work to the Catalyst Stage at the Singapore FinTech Festival. Come and see what the future of supervision could look like.