The 'eXellerator' builds upon Standard Chartered’s established technology outpost in Silicon Valley, SC Studios, and is the bank's first dedicated space for innovation in Asia, located at the heart of its main office building at Marina Bay Financial Centre.

Anju Patwardhan, Standard Chartered's global chief innovation officer, says: "This is where we can tap the depth of knowledge and talent, as well as work with local universities and research organisations, to help drive the bank’s innovation agenda.”

The bank has secured the support of the Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS) in establishing the facility. MAS has been actively encouraging the development of a 'Smart Financial Centre', in line with country's 'Smart Nation' plan, and recently appointed a 'chief fintech officer', Sopnendu Mohanty, to co-ordinate its efforts.

Says Mohanty: “The financial sector is an integral part of Singapore’s ambition to be a Smart Nation. A Smart Financial Centre with an open architecture and collaborative fintech community will promote innovation, application of technology advancements and talent development in financial services."

Standard Chartered has already laid the groundwork for the new lab through a multi-year collaboration agreement with A*Star’s Institute for Infocomm Research (I2R) - Singapore’s national information and communications technology research institute - to jointly work on data science research and experimentation by tapping the Institute’s network of data scientists and software engineers.

It has also partnered with DBS Bank and Singapore’s Infocomm Development Authority (IDA) to successfully complete a proof of concept (PoC) on the application of distributed ledger technology in trade finance invoicing with the objective of reducing risk around duplicate invoice financing for banks while preserving client confidentiality.