SINGAPORE Trends and Developments Contributed by: Adrian Ang and Benjamin Samynathan, Allen & Gledhill LLP
On a related note, in October 2025, MAS and the Insti - tute of Banking and Finance published an updated Job Transformation Map for GenAI, assessing the impact on specific job roles and identifying the nec - essary skills for the future workforce of financial insti - tutions. For the rest of 2026 and beyond, we can certainly expect increased regulatory focus on the adoption and use of AI. Institutional Grade Infrastructure MAS has also continued significant work on initiatives relating to asset tokenisation as well as cross-border payments and settlement. Under Project Guardian, MAS published reports on the “ Use of Tokenised Bank Liabilities for Transaction Banking” in July 2025, the “ Guardian Fixed Income Framework ” in November 2024, which was updated in November 2025 with an addendum on Delivery v Payment (DvP) settlement for Distributed Ledger Technology (DLT)-based debt securities and lessons learnt from custody arrangements for DLT-based debt securities, “ Building the Adoption Gap: Aligning Digi - tal Asset Offerings with Buy-Side Requirements” in November 2025, and “ Operationalising Tokenised Funds ” in November 2025. The report on the Use of Tokenised Bank Liabilities for Transaction Banking, which was published in July 2025, explored how tokenised bank liabilities (digi - tal representations of commercial bank money) and shared ledger infrastructures could alleviate some key pain points in transaction banking by addressing cur - rent inefficiencies in cross-border payments and FX settlements, such as high costs, limited settlement windows and time zone delays. It proposed design principles for tokenised bank liabilities in transaction banking, identified key risks associated with shared ledger-based payments, outlined actions to mitigate these key risks, and covered some case studies and examples. It highlighted that any improved efficien - cies achieved in transaction banking could generate broader benefits such as liquidity optimisation (freeing up liquidity), risk reduction (minimising counterparty and settlement risk), market standardisation, broader
adoption of digital solutions, and increased market confidence. The report on the Guardian Fixed Income Frame - work , which was updated in November 2025, aims to provide a standardised approach to tokenising fixed income securities by unifying three major existing industry standards into a single cohesive framework. Of interest would be the November 2025 updates, which provide a practical guide for implementing DvP settlement using DLT. DvP settlement is a mechanism where the transfer of securities happens if and only if the payment is successful. The report also considered different forms of digital money for settlement, such as fiat settlement, tokenised bank liabilities, stablecoins and wholesale central bank digital currencies, before noting that because on-chain settlement assets are considered a critical element to unlock the benefits of tokenisation, “tokenised bank liabilities and regulated stablecoins have emerged as potential settlement assets, alongside wholesale CBDC, to facilitate set - tlement of tokenised debt securities”. The November 2025 updates to the Guardian Fixed Income Frame - work also set out some lessons learnt from three case studies, such as the lack of interoperability between legacy systems and on-chain infrastructure. The report on “ Building the Adoption Gap: Aligning Digital Asset Offerings with Buy-Side Requirements” , which was published in November 2025, identified a disconnect between the potential of digital assets (tokenisation) and their actual adoption by institutional investors. While tokenisation initiatives were noted as prioritising technological innovation and theoretical efficiency gains, institutional investors face opera - tional, regulatory and fiduciary requirements that often prevent them from engaging with these new digital products. To close this gap, the report noted that digi - tal asset offerings should be designed with the spe - cific needs of institutional investors in mind. In October 2025, MAS launched Project BLOOM (Borderless, Liquid, Open, Online, Multi-Currency) to enable the use of settlement assets such as tokenised forms of commercial bank money and stablecoins that meet regulatory expectations. Project BLOOM aims to “coordinate disparate networks and enable the seamless use, transfer and redemption of differ -
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