The Monetary Authority of Singapore and the Australian Securities and Investments Commission have signed an Innovation Functions Co-operation Agreement which aims to help innovative businesses in both places penetrate each others' markets.

The agreement will allow innovative financial software or 'FinTech' companies in Singapore and Australia to "begin initial discussions" in each others' markets faster than before and receive advice about the licences they require, thus helping to reduce regulatory uncertainty and the time it takes them to go to market.

Sopnendu Mohanty, the chief fintech man at the MAS, thought that digital and mobile payments, blockchain and distributed ledgers, big data, and application programming interfaces (APIs) were going to be the main areas of interpenetration. Greg Medcraft, ASIC's chairman, said that his outfit had launched its 'innovation hub' last year, without saying what it was. He did, however, say that this initiative had led to a surge in requests by FinTech start-ups that wanted regulatory advice about ASIC's requirements. In particular, ASIC has dealt with robo-advice, crowd-sourced equity funding, payments, marketplace lending and blockchain business models. ASIC and the MAS have also promised to explore 'innovation projects' together, whatever that may mean.